Reflections on experiencing a natural disaster

Posted by Adrian Barnett on Thursday, March 3, 2022

Sometimes I fantasise about being in an earthquake. Not a big one, just enough to feel the ground shake, to see the earth move for a few seconds.

I should be careful what I wish for. Last Sunday I was in the plughole of a proper natural disaster as massive amounts of rain tried to barge its way into our house. It wasn’t any fun. Our house is fine, and other friends have had far worse experiences, but it has knocked me about a bit, and it’s been hard to focus on work.

Our house is on a hill, nowhere near a river. But the hill funnels water into our backyard and then onto the back door. I was sweeping water away from my back door for hours, sometimes with the help of my lovely neighbour. My other neighbour complained about a tiny amount of water spilling onto his driveway - so much for the Prime Minister’s belief that Australians stick together in natural disasters.

I heard another politician (Josh Fryndenberg) on the radio this morning cheerily talking about “thoughts and prayers”. I don’t want them. What I do want — and have wanted for a long while — is real political action on the climate crisis.

That amount of rain is not normal. I heard it described like a “river in the sky” and that is very accurate. And it just kept coming and coming. There were a few short breaks during which I tried to take a rest because you knew another assault was coming.

The repeated denials that we have a climate problem is blowing my mind. The continuing massive investment in oil and gas is so dumb that it can only be explained by corruption.

We took our pent-up dog for a walk the following day when the rain had finally stopped. We found a perfect crayfish far from the creek (dead), other people found a turtle (alive) and returned it to the river, I did see a tweet that someone tried to rescue a turtle that turned out to be bra - a much needed laugh. There’s also a video of a top bloke rescuing a wallaby near our house in a scene so flooded that it took me a while to recognise where it was. My local football club has also made the news as the flood made the lovely new artificial pitches look like a Dali painting.

All this death and destruction. All this cost, which will surely be billions of dollars. And yet we’re spending a mere trickle on climate research and renewable technology (or as Will Self calls it “The energy source that will never run out or kill us”). Our government still props up fossil fuels and puts barriers in the way of renewables.

I’ve had stress and anger coursing through my body for the last few days, like a swollen river. It’s still not fully subsided and I think this experience will leave a permanent water mark on my insides. But I know that this government don’t get it, they are impermeable to any amount of water, they are untouched by devastating fires. For the sake of our future, they need to be voted out.