At 9:36am on New Year’s Eve, the streetlights in Tathra, NSW, sprang to life – so dark was it, as the fierce red hue engulfed the skyline, that the automatic sensors had awakened them well after their regular overnight shift had ended.
This was just the first of the unusual things to happen that day.
Soon, billowing thick smoke rolled in, filling lungs and burning nostrils. Blackened ash fell on gardens and car bonnets alike, raining down like an unwelcome shower in Hell. And people started to panic: unsure, uncertain… terrified.
Over the next few hours (and, subsequently, days) apocalyptic scenes played out right up and down the NSW south coast. Mallacoota, Cobargo, Bateman’s Bay: towns now forever changed by the wrath of mother nature.
It was a similar scenario right across the country, as out of control fire-fronts threatened lives and communities with relentless intensity.
In all, at least 34 people were killed, hundreds of homes were destroyed, thousands of Aussies were displaced… traumatised… and more than half a billion precious animals lost their lives.
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The horror was, for most, unimaginable. But the rest of the country – and the world – were given a glimpse inside the heartache thanks to the pursuit of excellence by news media crews from every corner of the industry.
Stories from the frontlines. Stories of those bravely fighting the fires, and those grappling with unthinkable loss. Stories of real people, real Australians, opening up and sharing their raw and tangible grief as they struggled to accept the horror that had befallen them.
They were stories told by dedicated journalists and crews, on the ground in the midst of the drama. Stories told with genuine care and compassion. There were no rumblings about “exclusives” or jostling to get a position better than their colleague; there was just a collective objective to inform, from people willing to put themselves in the vicinity of harm’s way so that the rest of us could stay up-to-date.
And for that, we owe the news media an enormous thank you. To every journalist, cameraman, photographer, producer, soundie… thank you for shining a light on the plight of people who too regularly feel forgotten. Because these stories, breathtaking and gut-wrenching in equal measure, beamed across the world, allowed people affected by the crisis to be seen. At the worst time of their lives, they were able to feel that others cared. That their pain mattered.
The worldwide outpouring of support, emotional and financial, in a way we’ve never seen before, is in no small part due to the stories told by the media crews in the day and weeks that followed the crisis.
The media are often given a hard time. In an era where proclamations of “fake news” are bellowed from rooftops by those seeking to stifle the truth from finding its spotlight, it’s too easy to dismiss what we read and what we see with scepticism. So, it’s important that we acknowledge when the media get it right. And they got it right here, across the board.
If only all our politicians had been able to bring with them the same amount of intrinsic empathy…
* Coverage and discussion of the bushfire crisis continues in the season return of Q&A with new host Hamish MacDonald, Live from the Bega showgrounds on Monday, Feb 3. I’ll be in the audience for the special broadcast and will bring you a look behind-the-scenes, only at TV Blackbox.
