A fire plume rises from a property at the edge of Cobaw State Forest.
I spent a goodly amount of last Sunday on the ride-on mower, daredevil that I am. For the first time in almost two decades, I was going to make good on not letting the paddocks grow to waist height by mid-December and then have to get the old red Massey Ferguson out. This year, it's going to be an expanse of lawn.
So, out I went, and mowed and mowed. The sun burnt my skin. My arms were pink, but the grass became a green carpet. If I'm disciplined about keeping it low, the dog won't have to bounce along to see over the tall grass, as he has had to do in previous years.
Water levels in the state's north-west are at alarming levels. The Wimmera and Glenelg rivers might stop flowing over summer, and the desalination plant might actually have to be switched on.
But the green tinge is an illusion, a mirage of expectations. Soon enough it will fade. For, as I was cutting, I was remembering the summer of 1996. The rain stopped – well, seemed to stop – for more than a decade. The first four months of 1997 received a total of about 43 millimetres or rain. El Nino rose in 1997-98 and settled over Australia. In Victoria, the moisture was sucked from the land. Lakes and dams, including our two, fell so much in places you could see the remnants of the past rising from the fast-drying mud. (The past, in our case, comprised a few golf balls, a very sorry-looking plastic dinosaur and a deflated soccer ball.) Water restrictions one to four were invoked, north-south pipelines and desalination plants were proposed. The grass became hard stubble, the earth became scarred with cracks.
Last Monday, Melbourne recorded 34.4 degrees, the next day 35.8, and this after a grand final day of 31.3. The October average is 20. A controlled burn near Lancefield lit that Saturday jumped containment lines and grew into a fire of more than 4000 hectares. Premier Daniel Andrews said the fire season was "here now". It was going to be "a long, hot, dry and dangerous summer". Bushfires were also burning last week in Tasmania and Queensland.
Emergency management commissioner Craig Lapsley said Victoria had never experienced "this type of temperatures or wind speeds in the first week of October". It was only a little while ago the burn-off period was extended into October and it was common to see wisps of smoke in the Macedon Ranges as people took advantage of the extension. Not now.
Water levels in the state's north-west are at alarming levels. The Wimmera and Glenelg rivers might stop flowing over summer, and the desalination plant might actually have to be switched on. Melbourne storage, however, has only dropped from last year's 80.4 per cent to 74.5, but in Geelong, it has dropped from 83.7 per cent to 62.5 per cent in a year. In 2006, Melbourne's supply was about 40 per cent.
And now El Nino is bearing down upon us again; this one is forecast to be as big, if not bigger, than any other. The global temperature continues to set records, and warnings are emerging, for instance from Oxfam, of dire consequences for the world's poor nations and their people.
In this sunburnt country, a continent composed of three-quarters outback, droughts are a part of the circle of life. From 1895 to 1903, the entire country was badly affected by one, and, of course, there have been many others through the past century. We shouldn't be surprised when one looks us in the eye.
But still, this past week's events have been disconcerting. A week ago I was gathering kindling from the paddock to light a fire and hoping this would be the last of a long cold winter.
And now fire has broken its psychological containment lines. Is this the new norm? It's really impossible to say. It depends how far back in time you step.
All I know is here comes the sun, and I'm keeping a weather eye to the skies.
Warwick McFadyen is a senior writer.
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