Earth changes are certainly hotting up
This is how 2023 burned into our brains
Yet another taste of planetary upheavals in the closing weeks of the year.
On 18 December smoke from the fire could be seen across an area spanning hundreds of kilometers, including Tamworth, Walcha, Armidale and even coastal communities near Port Macquarie.
Within a few days, there were other fires in other Australian states. Summer had definitely arrived.
Jasper, a category two storm when it crossed the coast, was expected to be 'run-of-the-mill' to the storm-seasoned inhabitants of the Cairns coast. But this time it was different. In the town of Mossman, thousands of liters of water suddenly appeared on Sunday 17 December, hitting with the high tide at 2pm, inundating the town and then vanishing just as quickly. More than two meters of rain fell in some part of far North Queensland. In the remote community of Wujal Wujal, crocodiles were sighted in floodwaters where children had gone swimming. People had to climb into trees and onto roofs to avoid being washed away.
While some parts of the region were hit with a third of their average yearly rainfall in 24 hours, stretches of the Barron river which runs past Cairns reported 2.2 meters as a weekly total - more than the average for the city in a year. Ironically, for a while there was a drinking water shortage due to the Crystal Cascades water treatment plant being damaged.
Meanwhile in Iceland, authorities evacuated the nearly 4,000 inhabitants of the fishing town of Grindavik in November after the area was hit by a "seismic swarm" of more than 1,000 earthquakes in 24 hours. Which was just as well, because the volcanic eruption began on 17 December (see photo above).
Australia's 2022 East Coast Flood emergency
In March 2022 climate change came to the east coast in ways we could not ignore or trivialise. There were many stories of loss and despair, courage and endurance, mateship and selflessness, tragedy and uplift.From Brisbane to Grantham to Mullumbimby to Lismore and beyond, the sheer speed, volume and extent of the rain event told us something was happening that had never happened before in our lifetimes. It has also meant local volunteers and organisers were picking up the slack - including even helicopter drops - from official sources of disaster assistance. As the rain event moved south to Sydney, we learned that in Brisbane and surrounds alone, the toll was of some 20,000 properties damaged, 13 people killed and a probable repair bill of two and a half billion dollars.
Looking for the essence
I was in Mullum and Ocean Shores, NSW, around the time of these events and got a brief sense of the situation. I experienced - no internet; no working landline or mobile phone network; plus disruptions to mains power and water. Shortages of food and fuel; outages to ATMs and EFTPOS. Of so many media reporters who had brilliantly and often bravely covered these events, we chose just one of the published stories to shine a light on what had occurred...
The Guardian's snapshot
Click here for the Guardian snapshot of what happened at Mullumbimby.