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Keywords: Bushfires

  • ENVIRONMENT

    Bushfire commission's climate denial

    • Tony Kevin
    • 28 May 2010
    9 Comments

    The Black Saturday Royal Commission seems to be ignoring scientific evidence that climate change was a major causal factor. The possibility that Victoria's cool mountain ridges and valleys are drying out and that such ferocious fires are the way of the future might be a truth too much to bear.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    One year after Kinglake burned

    • Susan Fealy
    • 09 February 2010
    1 Comment

    Black stumps, capped with snow — no, capped with lime, beside the road, tree ferns, fanning their wing in the sun. A sign: children crossing. The road is so large. The CFA building, those three letters almost the three sides of a cross.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Best of 2009: When Leonard Cohen prays

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 07 January 2010
    1 Comment

    The world of pop music is dominated by prettiness and skin-deep perfection. In that context, Cohen's greatness is not instantly discernable. Lately a Buddhist, he has spent his latter years in study of religion — 'But cheerfulness keeps breaking through.' February 2009

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Best of 2009: Fatal firestorm's distant witness

    • Bronwyn Lay
    • 05 January 2010

    A year ago, on the day of the National Apology, the emotion was palpable over the seas. But it was hard not being there, standing on the same dirt as your fellow countrymen. It is similarly difficult to be away from home during a time of natural disaster. February 2009

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Lessons from Greek and Australian 'quench-fires'

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 02 September 2009
    3 Comments

    In Australia it would beggar belief to see elderly nuns directing garden hoses against the fires that threaten their convents. But that is what happened last week in Greece. Australia and Greece resemble each other in many ways, but not in the way they cope with fire.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Flame blame is a shame

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 24 August 2009
    11 Comments

    The Black Saturday bushfires had the same relationship to previous fires as the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima did to other bombing raids. Defects of communication and organisation, while regrettable and costly, were irrelevant: there's no assured safety for those who live near bushland.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Strategies for a new era of firestorms

    • Paul Collins
    • 21 August 2009
    5 Comments

    There were many mistakes made on Black Saturday and the Interim Report of the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission points them out. For now the commissioners avoid the 'bigger fire questions', but in the end these will have to be faced.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Predicting Black Saturday

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 28 May 2009
    1 Comment

    It's frightening how precisely experts predicted the weather and its impact on the seemingly inevitable Black Saturday fires. A new documentary questions the adequacy of the response, given the veracity of these warning signs.

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  • RELIGION

    On blaming God for swine flu

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 06 May 2009
    15 Comments

    An American priest reportedly claimed that swine flu was God's punishment for sin. The idea that God might use natural disasters to punish people is repugnant. But at first glance the Scriptures do seem to represent God as doing just that.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Outsourcing care

    • Michael Mullins
    • 23 March 2009
    5 Comments

    The Victorian bushfires forced people to think about the costs and values associated with living in the bush. The financial meltdown will in turn make us consider our care for the needy, and how, and indeed whether, we must pay for it.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Gain from pain

    • Michael Mullins
    • 09 March 2009

    The Victorian bushfires occurred during a time of financial uncertainty, but Australians gave their money generously. It was as if they were consciously and calculatingly investing their funds in the solidarity of the community.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Against the waning of bushfire grief

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 25 February 2009
    3 Comments

    My brother, who has been working with the SES, tells me of the eerie silence in the burnt-out bush: there are no birds. He also tells me of quirks of fate: some chooks had a miraculous escape, as did their owners, who later collected 40 eggs.

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