My youngest daughter plays the violin. Jellyfish dance in her eyes, her freckles dazzle, and her wiggly hair, untamed, audacious, erupts out of her hair tie. The sinuous, loopy notes swoop from under the door. It is a joy to listen to—meanwhile, the air conditioner whirls. Unable to take a breath—the heat is unrelenting as it settles over the eastern Australian states. Days and days. Summer isn’t even half over. I despair in the room next door as wildfire rips through a town in western New South Wales. On the same day, the town recorded its highest temperature since records were kept. Years of broken promises, of feeling air full of water turning out to be only wind.

The empty water tanks, the dried waterways, the undergrowth spreading in, between, around forests, farmland scorched. Juiceless—tinder dry and then. It begins with a thin blue whisper of smoke in the distance, slithering along the currents of hot air—sparked from the sky, sprouting from the earth, or lit by the hands of fire-makers. Ordinary people turn their faces to the sky. Dry lips, ash caught in the back of their throats with eyes seared, searching for answers that don’t come. How does one comprehend? In less than a day’s travel, the long, winding brown Brisbane River, not blue, has flooded on a King tide.

It is a flood of biblical proportions! A river with a city problem. As a wall of water carried, swept away twenty-thousand houses. Cyclone Nancy wreaked havoc further up north; meanwhile, Brisbane copped her tail end. The tale of ignoring an inconvenient tragic past.

Meanwhile, we have another government inquiry! We continue to act surprised as we continue to extend our urban spread across floodplains. Ordinary people ask, how does the rain halt at the border? I feel the ripples of despair travel across the water, drift on the currents of hot wind; No-one is willing to take accountability. Finally, someone says it’s just weather.

I turned off the television, had a cup of tea to help me depart. I contemplate the advice around these days—the difficulty with deciphering between the advice I need and the need to be heard. Cat stalks Dog in a fight for precious territory in the hallway, and everybody ignores the obvious. I look at the photos my eldest daughter has posted. She is in Thailand. They make me laugh.

There are ten billion plus ants on earth, and a small population of the Surf Coast ant community is nesting in our kitchen. Industrious. Ubiquitous. Yet, I am surprised to find them in my kitchen. I wonder, do I reach for the insecticide, or do I learn to live with them?

A drop of blood falls to the bathroom tiles, a perfect splash.

Photo by Jo Curtain