When we come to write the history of climate politics in Australia, it’s possible New Year’s Eve 2019 will be seen as the moment everything changed. That was the day the nation – and indeed the world – watched in horror and despair as the people of Mallacoota fled to the beach to escape the wall of flame bearing down on their town.
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| The photo taken by Mallacoota resident Allison Marion showing her 11-year-old son, Finn, seated in the stern of a dinghy. |
They weren’t the only ones fleeing the fire that day. In towns from the Blue Mountains to the outskirts of Melbourne, communities were facing catastrophe. But there was something about the images from Mallacoota, the crowds of people and animals huddled on the sand in the eerie red light that somehow brought not just the scale but the uncanniness of the crisis home. “When Brueghel meets the Anthropocene,” a friend of mine tweeted about similar scenes in Malua Bay. More like Bosch, others replied.
Read the story from The Guardian by James Bradley - “Terror, hope, anger, kindness: the complexity of life as we face the new normal.”
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