18 January

Droughts and flooding rains. Mackellar’s line was a bit of misty-eyed fondness. But ironically, droughts cause flooding rains, and flooding rains cause droughts. Both are symptoms of how the Australian landscape has been gradually destroyed, firstly by aboriginal people using fire to manage their food harvest, and then by European settlers with broadscale agriculture. Both of those destroy vegetation, land without vegetation turns to desert. Drought. When rain falls on desert, it runs off - it floods. Those grasslands between our coast and our full deserts are all progressively turning to desert too. It’s why we’re baking in the heat in summer, the whole country is becoming a bare oven in the sun. Maybe the only true vision for Australia is to find a way to re-vegetate the land. And get animals back on it too, a full living ecosystem again. Which will also trap carbon in the land (and reduce climate change), as well as water in the land, which will restore our rivers and billabongs. If we don’t do it, we will die. Desert kills civilisations. Simple as that, you can’t eat or drink sand.