Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.
Sally’s retirement unit was in the poorest part of the city. It was 2035 so it was one of the suburbs that had been by the Bay. Sally lived in a room with ancient, faded carpet that had once been a deep, velvety purple. The room had been cream coloured but the surfaces had stained yellow.
A 12 year drought had left
dusty, grey, leached of green. The famous avenues of trees had been hard hit. Many had succumbed to scorching heat and the council had struggled to save the last with precious bore water.
Docklands, Brighton, Williamstown and St.Kilda had been flooded and the foreshores had been sacrificed. Now a high concrete wall ran around Port Phillip Bay. It was ugly, grey and stark, as hideous as the old wall around The West Bank. Palestine had returned to the Palestinians years ago but it was a shadow of the beautiful country it once was.
During the War thousands of Australian families had lost children, shipped to the battlefields. Soon after the War, street battles and strikes had rid Australia of the government. The police and army were well equipped but they were no match for the demonstrators.
Sally had fought side by side with students and unionists, refugees, socialists and workers from every kind of workplace. Her long dark hair tied back, bullet proof jacket, her feet protected by Blundstone boots. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets. Sally was elated, after decades of struggle the people had finally wrested back control. Life was sweet for a while but then the heat began to rise. The ice caps melted.
She could remember the 1980’s when the summer nights were cool and a breeze rushed across the Bay. The Summer busters tearing in from the South West and thunder rumbling across Melbourne before the sudden rain. She remembered walks in the forests where tree ferns lined the creeks and she had seen king parrots with feathers so rich in orange and green they almost looked fluorescent. The smell of eucalptus or the pots of herbs on the deck as the spray from the hose reached them.
There had been spray from waterfalls, meals at restaurants surrounded by lawns, ponds, rhododendrons and maples. One night she visited a garden so beautiful it could make Ivan Milat break down and cry. People sat on the grass and listened to a concert in the long, mild evening.
Winter mists as she drove down from the ridge into the haven of The Patch. A wide lake of fog that filled the Yarra Valley. The sun rose above the fog, flower farms, strawberry fields, tree nurseries. Then vines ceased to grow in the Yarra Valley and it turned to a ghost land, the skeletons of vines left on rotting trellises.
The forests had been hit by bushfires. Black Saturday had been the first of many fires that scorched the high country. Kinglake, Healesville and Marysville, Lake Mountain, Sassafras and Ferny Creek. People could not live there any more. Once the forest was destroyed in fires that burnt hotter than a nuclear bomb, drought killed plants that tried to grow back.
Now the Summers stretched out over much of the year.
Thunder storms brought savage lightening and stripping winds, but little rain.
For people living on the flatlands it was hard to keep houses cool. Crop failures across the planet had led to hunger riots. The children and older people suffered the most.
Sally remembered once, walking into the cool aqua water at Wilson’s Prom. The whiteness of the sand and the squeaky sound it made as you walked. The granite boulders half covered in bright lichen and the banksia trees cloaked in gold flowers. The silver backs of the leaves, wombats snuffling around the tent late at night. Rosellas in the tea trees,metallic scales of tiny darting fish in the river.
In 2021 there had been a run of nights over 36 degrees and possums had started to die and fall out of the trees.people gathered them up in back yards. Wombats hid in their burrows growing thin and mangy. Kangaroos scrabbled for any remaining grass and then hopped away to die.
Wilsons Prom was just a childhood memory now. Like green ferns, waterfalls and fogs, National Parks became a thing of the past. Parks in Queensland were destroyed by Cyclone Tony. Meterorologists named the Big One after Mr. Abbott. The man who said climate change was “crap” The Gold Coast was hideous, truly, not missed; but a cyclone and flooding that destroyed Brisbane?
Sydney was drowning under rising sea water. It had been a stunning harbour.She thought about Brett Whitely paintings and the glowing murals in the Opera House.
Sally started as the worker brought round her meal, a protein shake and some energy biscuits. People hardly ever ate fresh food now. The price was phenomenal. Sometimes she thought about meals at home in the hills. Steaming bowls of soup or Summer salads with coriander. Biting into a juicy nectarine that had ripened on the tree. Cold beer on a warm afternoon after a swim.
She chewed on her food and put her knotty feet up on the old Ikea footstool. The wind snapped the bamboo blinds back and forth. She had only faint dreams now of a place with waterfalls and tree ferns and rain. Winter fires and crisp sheets. One morning when she was a child they were camping and the puddles froze overnight. She broke the ice, stomping with her little gumboots.
The gritty wind picked up and she lay back on the bed. Minimum temperature tonight 31 degrees.
The wind farm that covered most of the hills cranked up. The air conditioners hummed and Melbourne finally slept.
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