Since then, of course, the Australian bush fires have turned into an environmental, economic and social disaster for a land that has called itself the Lucky Country. Lucky no longer.
The epithet itself comes from the title of a book written by Donald Horne in 1964.
The title comes from the opening lines in the last chapter. “Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people’s ideas and although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise.”
So, in fact, the origin of the nickname was negative in the context of the book though Aussies have embraced it as a favourable sobriquet, much to the annoyance of the author.
That last sentence about its leaders so lacking curiosity about events that surround them they are often taken by surprise is pertinent.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s ill-fated decision to shoot off for a holiday in Hawaii before Christmas while his country burned is an excellent example. Of course, so outraged were his fellow country people that he had no choice but to quickly return and brush up on his empathy. As they say, once you can fake sincerity, you can fake anything.
Since then he hasn’t been able to buy a break and has been given a pretty hard time by people who have been devastated by the fires. That single misjudgment might come to define his prime ministership.
A book written about us was The Half-Gallon Quarter-Acre Pavlova Paradise, penned by visiting Englishman Austin Mitchell. He later went on to become a Labour MP in the British Parliament and is now often heard entertainingly commentating on our radio about events in Britain.
His book had a fonder tone of our country than Horne’s had of his.
Back to the Australian bush fires.
Last year was the hottest and driest that country has ever recorded with temperatures 1.5C above the long-term average. The second hottest globally.
These fires have burned 5.2 million hectares in New South Wales and 1.3m hectares in Victoria. The North Island by way of comparison is 11m hectares so more than half the area of the North Island. And they haven’t finished.
The impacts on the country, its people and wildlife are unimaginable.
We have been seeing the effects of the smoke in our skies now for several weeks.
NASA is reporting Chileans are now observing the effects in their skies and predicting the smoke will circle the globe and cross Australia from the west.
Which brings us back to where we began, thinking about the consequences of widespread planting of combustible species like pines in regions prone to dry periods, droughts and gale force winds.
If we are going to go down this track then we had better plan this very well with very wide firebreaks, huge dams and invest in large-scale firefighting ability.
And it shouldn’t be the taxpayer who needs to outlay this capital but those companies and individuals who stand to gain from the carbon credits and forestry returns. Sounds reasonable to me.
