Unconscious Danger!
Summer in Australia brings warmth and frivolity; it also brings danger.
Driving the Midland Highway close to the middle of Tasmania I thought I smelled smoke. The fog had set in, it’s November, and the driving conditions should have settled, yet I was made to consider low-beam lights to maximise vision.
When I first entered the fog, there was a distinctive odor. An odor that immediately turned my thoughts to fire, bushfire. The panic, the confusion, the concern, the worry – the environment destroyed, the people distraught.
The catastrophic Dunalley bushfires of 2013 shook the foundations of our state. I vividly remember the aftermath and can recall the stories that I was told at the time. The school burned to the ground, the hero employees at the Port Arthur Historic Site, and the apparent randomness of one house standing while the next-door neighbors lay in ruins.
The area took years to rebuild, the people took far longer, and the images remain.
Just six years later, we would experience the bushfires that destroyed towns and killed community members on the east coast of the mainland, known as the Black Summer of 2019/2020. We visited a major Bunnings in a major town to gather supplies and less than a week later it burned to the ground. A warehouse no longer with accelerants galore, Bunnings went up like a bomb had gone off.
The destruction of the Black Summer was like nothing I had ever seen before and, hopefully, will never witness again. The fires burned more land mass across the nation than the horrific bushfires in Victoria during 2009 known as Black Saturday and the 1983 Ash Wednesday event combined. Complete and utter destruction from the ground to the very tops of the tallest, thickest gum trees with the fire ball passing through at an extraordinary height clearing everything in its path. Towns that we visited were destroyed including shops where we had purchased secondhand books, leather products, coffee, and ice-cream – nothing was spared.
And once I arrived in Hobart and completed a workday, I drifted off to sleep and woke up listening to the sea. Although the sea it was not, the whirring of the air conditioner had sent my semi-conscious thoughts to East Coast Tasmania. I was certain I could hear a wave barreling and then dumping on the sand before retracting back home. Rather than waking me, it was more of a comfort - waves crashing, and the sound of the sea has always provided serenity and, as I drifted off again, I was saddened to come to the realisation that my waves were merely the engagement of the reverse cycle.
The water had been part of my thinking during the day. Royal Life Saving - Australia had recently released financial year 2023/24 statistics on drownings across Australia and the findings were reported on a national radio station. Yet again the report made for sobering reading.
“The National Drowning Report 2024, published by the Royal Life Saving – Australia in partnership with Surf Life Saving Australia, found there were 323 drowning deaths over the past 12 months, 16 per cent higher than the ten-year average (278).”
I have often thought that swimming is a sport for those who can. And while there may be exceptions, the socioeconomic status of parents and families often determines expertise in the water. This has been further exacerbated post Covid as those involved in swimming lessons never picked them back up again after the pandemic.
But it’s not just kids from wealthy backgrounds who love the water. Summers spent by the pool, and alongside water holes and naturally forming swimming spots like the Cataract Gorge are a rite of passage for Tasmanian teens.
Sadly, the report backed my hypothesis.
“People from disadvantaged and regional areas drowned at a higher rate than those from higher advantaged areas, particularly in children aged 5 – 14 years”.
And to further highlight the point, just “22% of the 2,113 public and publicly accessible aquatic facilities in Australia are located in the least advantaged areas in Australia”, the report found.
To put this into context, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, using the Index of Relative Socio-economic Advantage and Disadvantage (IRSAD,Tasmania is the most socio-economically disadvantaged region of Australia outside of the Northern Territory. The band of disadvantage that is prevalent across north east Tasmania acutely highlights the challenges we face.
Yet, staggering, the state government, via the education minister, has decided that we should close a public facility, the Glen Dhu Pool, situated in the north east of Tasmania because we have a budget problem and a consultant said it was too costly to fix the pipes.
Instead, public schools in these disadvantaged areas utilise their meagre and underfunded budgets to bus students to and from, and to pay wealthy private schools to hire their pools for learn to swim programs. It’s nothing short of outrageous.
Summer is a beaut’ time across Australia as we are drawn to coastal areas to cool off and unwind. Sadly, at this time, bushfires and drownings also impact our communities. Let’s hope for a season of calm.