A dense haze of smoke crawled over Melbourne and embraced us for a day in its lonely pilgrimage, inviting us to contemplate its mourning rite, its long prayer.
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| The writer Alexis Wright in Australia. |
This smoke came from a cremation of the natural world - the bushfires from the Bunyip state forest that had begun during days of a major heatwave running across the country. The forest lies 65km east of Melbourne where mountain ash grow, prickly tea-trees, stringy barks and heathland swamps. In the Woiworung mythology of the Kulin nation, the Bunyip is a spirit that punishes bad people who disturb its home in the swamps of the Bunyip River, and according to the Parks Victoria information sheet on the park, local Aboriginal people avoided the area.
Read the story from The Guardian by Alexis Wright - “We all smell the smoke, we all feel the heat. This environmental catastrophe is global.”
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