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As I awoke this week to further news of the deadliest bushfires in Australia’s history, I stumbled towards the kitchen before being intercepted by the loud bark of my mobile phone. The voice at the other end was that of one of my closest friends, his fatigue and distress blunted by the refuge he’d taken in a bottle of wine.
The fires, which have already claimed around 200 lives across the state of Victoria, have drawn promises of an emergency relief fund to help the thousands of Victorians now left homeless. No one in their right mind could fail to be affected by some of the eyewitness accounts of burnt out cars and charred remains, or the experience of one badly burnt man who struggled to a stranger’s property carrying his horribly injured baby daughter, and who had already lost his wife and other child to the flames.
My friend, a radio producer for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, had spent the past 6 days travelling numerous sites of destruction. His own home, a rural farm cottage an hour’s drive from Melbourne, had been locked up and left in the hope that it, plus the dog and horses he keeps at the property, would survive while he reported on lost lives elsewhere. But what he hadn’t reckoned on, was the effect that the sadness and misery of others would have on him. He is, after all, a seasoned professional, used to witnessing death, destruction and despair during his travels as an international news producer. Such devastation so close to home, however, had reminded him of the fragility in which our lives are encased, and how “hell on earth” isn’t only visited upon those living with seemingly intractable regimes.
We talked for more than an hour. He, describing with faltering voice some of the personal tragedies he’d witnessed over the past few days, and me, attempting to offer some level of calm support from thousands of miles away. In the end, what we shared, apart from our deep friendship, was gratitude….gratitude for the simple fact of knowing that a small voice from across the oceans can bring solidarity and love amidst the horror of one of the darkest episodes in Australia’s history.
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