Australia

When I was younger I used to love English period novels. For me, love (and life) could only happen on gusty Yorkshire moors, over which brooding Englishmen strode to reclaim their honour (and their women). The moors, a rugged green, placed against sprawling hanging gardens of those very English period homes, came to very much inform my idea of what nature is.

My hometown of Melbourne, although at the farthest reaches of the now retreating threads of British colonialism, did little to convince us otherwise. With its sweeping avenues, crowned by bowed maples and elms, and its very Victorian achitecture, Melbourne has always been more of a desperate call to things past, then a place in its own right. Of course, there was the Australia (Australia!) of the dry and the Australia of the relentless horizon, but it was always at odds with that European trajectory of 'civilisation', and was kept in the deeper recesses of the mind.

Yesterday, Jess and I drove solemnly up to the peak of Mt Cooper- the tallest point in metropolitan Melbourne. We stood there, with light gusts of wind blowing acrid smoke our way, and dry cracks of lightning in the distance, contemplating the destruction unfolding before our eyes. After two weeks of freak heatwaves, melting infrastructure and flash blackouts, we'd been delivered into the arms of another behemoth: megafires.

That morning, we'd woken up to scrambled reports of friends without homes, or worse, families that were simply gone. Historic towns I had visited as a child, with their quaint Ye Olde Lolly Shoppes, were all but razed to the grounds. A sprawling homestead that we had all visited only a few winters earlier, was left flattened, with only a chimney rising from the black. And Australia raged on, and it raged on, unapologetic.

So, it was up there on Mt Cooper, with ominious clouds gathering above us, that Jess took that phonecall from her boyfriend. He was being sent to recover the dead from their homes and the chassis of their cars. We stood, contemplating the dust plains and the rising plumes of smoke, and we finally understood: this was Australia finally turning her back on that empire and forging ahead, mapping out a new topography.