A guest post from Michele Jarldorn – Flinders University, Adelaide.
Just a few days before Christmas when the temperature in Adelaide reached over 40 degrees for the fourth consecutive day, I watched with sadness as the Cuddlee Creek bushfires burned an area enmeshed in my childhood memories. It’s not just bushfires – unprecedented heatwaves are killing our wildlife. I have lived my entire life in Adelaide and grew up knowing that this was the driest state in the driest continent. But, in my 56 years I have never seen Australia so dry; some towns have literally run out of water. This is not just one day or even one week of catastrophic fire danger though; Australia has been burning since September, yet Prime Minister Scott Morrison felt it was okay to go on holiday to Hawaii. This lack of leadership, according to Richard Flanagan “symbolised contempt for all Australians” (2019). For the First Nations Peoples of Australia, the utter disregard and resulting degradation of country is another in a long line of injustices of theft, lies, racism and dispossession (Pascoe, 2018).