Frightful Australian Wildfires

Like many around the world, I’ve been interested in and concerned by the Australian wildfires that started in September and still continue. The images making their way around the internet of fire-reddened skies, burned-out houses, and singed koalas are both sorrowful and frightening. Yesterday, I noticed a new story about the possibility of floods and mudslides from heavy rains in fire-affected areas. This seems like one more potentially devastating problem for the country to deal with in an already stressful time.

According to the news reports I’ve seen, the fires have been spread out mostly along the eastern part of Australia, in the states of Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia, and Victoria. Northern Queensland is home to Cairns, the Great Barrier Reef, and the Daintree Rainforest. New South Wales houses Sydney, the Blue Mountains National Park, and the Hunter Valley wine region. South Australia holds Adelaide, Coober Pedy (where people live underground and mine for opals), and Flinders Ranges National Park. Victoria is where Melbourne is located (host of the Australian Open tennis tournament), as well as Grampians National Park, Lake Tyres State Park, the Great Ocean Road (where the 12 Apostles limestone formations can be found in Port Campbell National Park), and Phillip Island Nature Park (home to Fairy Penguins, also known as Little Penguins, the smallest known penguin species).

States Map of Australia (Wikimedia/Richard Russell and Dominic Dwyer)

When I was in college, I spent a semester exploring these areas and many others as a study abroad student. Although the program’s home base was in Melbourne, my fellow students and I were fortunate to take both school-sponsored and independent trips during our time there. I will be forever thankful to Hoyt Edge, the Rollins College professor and mentor who suggested I pursue the opportunity to study in Australia during my senior year rather than graduate a year early, an option I was seriously considering.

The friendships I made with my fellow study abroad students have been among the longest lasting I’ve experienced in my life. Although we don’t often see each other in person, we keep in touch via holiday cards, Facebook, and LinkedIn. When I recently made a major life change, one of them offered me a place to stay if I needed it. Another drove an hour each way with two young children in the car to meet me when I was vacationing near her home.

I remember plenty of fun times with these friends during our semester abroad. In addition to the trips we took, we picnicked in the park together, went to concerts together (Yothu Yindi and The Cure), we saw movies (The Power of One and Strictly Ballroom), went dancing, and ate lunch together in the cafeteria every school day. We talked during classes about themes in Australian literature, about environmentalism in Australia, and about various cultural philosophies in Australia. Between classes, we discussed our day-to-day lives, our homesickness, and our culture shock. We thought together of the things we would miss most when we were no longer in Australia, such as Anzac biscuits, the “No Worries” attitude, and daily tram rides.

Are these connections and memories the only reason I care about the fires in Australia? Certainly it pains me to think of the places I visited being affected by fire. Is the mountain I climbed in Grampians National Park still topped by trees, or have the trees burned? What about where we sat around a campfire in Lake Tyres State Park and listened to Aboriginal elders tell stories? Is that area charred now? And how are those tiny penguins doing on Phillip Island? Also, the Blue Mountains have been in the news as having been affected, and I had an almost spiritual connection to that place when I visited, so I wonder how different it looks now.

I hope these are not the only reasons I care. I hope my caring also stems from a broader-reaching concern about the Earth and its inhabitants. For example, when it comes to the cause of the fires, people are offering a few different explanations. Many blame climate change. Some have claimed arson was involved. Either way, I feel concern. If climate change is the cause, what are we doing to save the only known humanly-inhabitable place in our universe? And if arson was involved, what are we doing to educate people to avoid deliberately harming the only planet we know of where we can live?

But, I not only wonder what we are doing as humans overall, I also wonder what I am doing. Not much, I’m afraid. And this is what the Australian wildfires remind me. What can I do to be a positive influence in the world?