By Lance Payne, Mackay, Formerly of Mount Gambier
SADLY I am old enough to remember Ash Wednesday in Mount Gambier – the heat, the smoke, the dead sheep and live stock all burnt to death.
Trapped by fence lines, the burnt pine trees standing in the wake of the flames, that were quickly cut down and stored in Lake Bonney and the poignant image published by The Border Watch of a church in Elizabeth Street with the church spire set against a black smoky sky.
For a few days now in Queensland at Mackay, the air is alive with smoke that hangs heavily in the sky wherever I look.
Cold bits of blacken embers drift out of the sky – not much where I am, but you can see them if you look.
The radio blurts out “evacuate” this town or that city, the alarming words I have heard all before on Ash Wednesday.
The people of Mackay and central Queensland are up to speed on what to do in a cyclone emergency, but for them, it is a new frightening emergency.
The warnings given out such as “do not climb on to the roof of your house” seem quite bizarre to me, but in a flood that is what they do.
They climb up on to the roof of their house, moving away from the rising water.
The stories of the fires are everywhere you look in the newspapers and online.
When Cyclone Debby hit Mackay it received less coverage.
But then again this is evidence of climate change in action.
The dry heat for the past few days is the same type of heat I have only ever felt on the sun-backed plains in Adelaide and the media are saying we are not out of the woods yet, with a string of hot dry windy days forecast up to next Tuesday.
The troubling part is, going into cyclone season, what’s next?
Lance Payne, Mackay,
Formerly of Mount Gambier
