The tallest flowering plant on Earth Mountain ash

New Year’s Eve 2019 is a day that will be indelibly etched into the memories of Australians. Spectacular and superlative, our beaches have always held a special place close to our hearts. But as footage of 4000 people huddled on the waterfront at Mallacoota in Victoria was beamed worldwide, beaches came to represent something else entirely.

Bathed in an eerie red glow and thick with bushfire smoke, the shoreline had become a fallback line from the advancing threat of climate change; a final refuge from the flames. As morning progressed, red turned to black and thunder reverberated ominously as the fire generated its own gigantic pyrocumulus clouds.

At Malua Bay, 280 kilometers to the north on the NSW South Coast, 1000 people, horses, dogs, cats, and chickens were packed onto another beach, hemmed in by a wall of fire. The story was repeated at other locations along the nation’s southeastern coastline as we faced bushfires of a severity and scale never previously imagined. In bushland all around, kangaroos and birds attempted to make good their escape, while tree-bound koalas succumbed to the flames.