In the summer of 2019, Australia had the worst bushfires on record. These two episodes investigate how communities resisted and recovered from the bushfires. This dramatic climate crisis made global headlines, but the innovative and sometimes risky strategies that communities used to fight them didn’t. These episodes delve into two places that demonstrated the kind of skills needed to protest when the state and big not-for-profits don’t deliver.
The first is north of Sydney in Wollombi, where an ad hoc firefighting service called the Black Ops Mosquitos formed to fill the gaps left by the Rural Fire Service. The second is south of Sydney in Bateman’s Bay, where a local barista created a donations and logistics centre because large NGO’s failed to provide.
There are plenty of lessons in these stories. What stands out is the importance of long term relationships in short term crises, and the power of being in a place as the way to cultivate relationships. ‘Fly in fly out’ politics has for too long governed how we make life together. These stories show that in a crisis too much distance leads to the failure of formal institutions. We would do well to hold on to this idea – whether we are a local community volunteer, a staff worker at a not-for-profit organisation or a political leader or candidate – because the politics of connection and trust is what we need to handle and overcome the cycle of crises that define life as we know it today.
