"On The Beach Starred Ava Gardner And Gregory Peck. The Remake Stars Us."

[hatrack]

Last edited Thu Jan 2, 2020, 08:27 AM - Edit history (1)

EDIT

We’re used to seeing the bush growing back quickly, green shoots appearing within days on burnt trunks. Eucalypt forests have amazing regenerative powers. But these fires are tearing through ancient forests that have never burnt before. They are done for. And the burnt gums are waiting for rain.

We’re taught not to look at the sun. Every child on earth is given the same warning. But in Australia these days you can stare all you like. Take a good long look at that pink disc sinking in the murk. It can’t do you much harm. It’s been tamed by smoke. The smoke is new too: cities suffocating. We’re used to a day or two in town when there’s a bit of smoke about and the light turns a horrible yellow. That’s every summer. But this is different. Deep in cities, miles from the fire front, the smoke is so thick you can’t see to the end of the street.

Yet we’ve never seen so much before. Everyone is a photographer now. And until the transmission towers burn and batteries flatten extraordinary images are making their way to the media. We’re seeing these horrors in all their detail. On the beach at Mallacoota, families sat in the smoke under a sky of flame. It’s all on camera. The scene was repeated up and down the coast. At Malua Bay in New South Wales, children, their parents and grandparents were trapped for a day and night between fires and the sea. They’re safe now but it was a close call.

Already, these scenes are part of the national imagination. Among Australians of a certain age, they stir memories of a Hollywood potboiler about the end of the world filmed 60 years ago in Melbourne. On the Beach starred Ava Gardener, Gregory Peck and Fred Astaire. The remake stars us.

EDIT

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/01/australia-is-becoming-a-nation-of-dread-and-the-world-looks-on-with-pity-and-scorn

[The Blue Flower]

1. "Pity and scorn"

As long as Australia's PM Morrison denies climate change and the need to act, the rest of us can only look on in horror and disgust at the willful stupidity. I hope the whole rotten government is replaced in the next election by the people who have been terrorized and traumatized by this catastrophe.