My folks drove from Adelaide to Sydney on a day like today. I was only a month or so old. They had an esky full of ice and draped a damp washcloth over me. It'd dry in minutes, so they'd repeat over and over.
I shudder to think how things would've turned out if that old car had broken down.
My mum was a ten-pound pom. One of 6 siblings. I understand life improved slowly but considerably, after they arrived from Liverpool (her mum, my maternal grandmother, used to babysit John Lennon)
My dad is 5th generation Aussie, from the middle of the wheat belt.
They got by, but war neurosis took its toll on his Dad. He was more harm than help.
My personal take on the fires, is that too much has been quarantined as National Parks, then neglected.
The massive fuel load builds until one inevitable spark incinerates an entire state and suddenly its my fault for using that plastic straw that time.
My Mum a 10 pound pom too, 6 siblings, Hull. Dad born in Munich, arrived post war with 2 brothers as 3 yo with my grandparents. Working class. Dad became draftsman, worked til 60 ish. Never had aur cin growing uo. We were comfortable but not loaded. Standard cars, later better aa they saved well. One investment property Dad went in with his brothers, profit okay but not extreme. They have a lovely house on an acre, not huge by standards around here. Definitely wouldnt blame them for anything.. theyve lived a pretty conscious life. They don't even have air con now! Just a passive solar house.
What a day to pick to drive halfway across the country! Obviously, it wasn't your time as that car held out. My dad's cars were always breaking down. I can't imagine one would have ever made that kind of journey. A trip to Wales to see his parents usually meant a week of maintenance to make sure it got there.
Are the national parks the areas that used to be maintained by the aboriginal burnings?
At one time I'd have said extend the rainforests and you won't get the fires, but then Brazil...Who'd have thought a rainforest could burn.
I think the aboriginals used to burn wherever the bush was sufficiently dense, then harvest the wildlife fleeing from the flames.
Thousands of nomadic groups, each picking an area clean of edibles, then burning it to the ground, meant no one area was big enough, or had a chance to grow dense enough, to cause the kind of bedlam we're living through now.