Talking Point: Fire tragedy revives the spirit forged in the trenches

CRAIG CARNES: Pay tribute to the character and humour galvanised by devastation

TOUGH: Fighting a fire in Bilpin, NSW, in December. Picture: David Gray/Getty

ICONIC Australian band Skyhooks summarised our annus horribilis with their schmaltzy slapstick, gothic horror catchphrases, “Horror movie and it’s blown a fuse. Horror movie, it’s the 6.30 news”. Talk about “Shocking us out of our brain”. And it’s only February!

The figures are staggering, 25.5 million acres burned. This is an area the size of England and nearly 50 per cent larger than the Amazon fires of last year. Add the soul-destroying one billion animals, especially kangaroos and koalas, estimated dead. Many species on the precipice of extinction. Entire rural communities lost the lot and that includes lives. The toll on our continent is catastrophic. The cost, probably over $100 billion and counting. What comes of all this tragedy?

Turn to the news again and listen to what emerges from the smouldering embers and smashed communities. A cavalcade of Australians from all walks of life being interviewed. All bloodied, bruised but never bowed and broken, and their mantra is the same – hope. “It’s only a house, the family is fine, found our wedding album, the dog made it”. Never whinge, never moan, just get on with it. Rebuild.

The Australian character is a rebounding one and has its foundation in independent minded and anti-authoritarian characters. A firefighter made the news when he leaned out of his truck to briefly speak to the press and said to them, “Tell the prime minister to go and get ….”. Tex Perkins during the live New Year’s Eve coverage waved a digit finger in the air indicating this was for the PM’s lack of action on climate change.

You have to love being part of a country where you can do that sort of thing and not go missing the next day or end up in court. That’s how we are. You can respect the highest office in the land but through some Australian version of the sixth degree of separation theory, you are able to show your ire when especially our elected representative do not come up to par with the pub test or try to pull the wool over our eyes. Yes, we are a country of equals, but we fought hard for the privilege.

A navy chaplain called Anzac “a sacred moment”. Mateship as a concept now embedded in our cultural DNA was fashioned in the bloody trenches of the western front. Even then humour was the mainstay of lifting the spirit. A publication, The ANZAC Book; Humour during the horror of the war, discovered at a garage sale for $3 was apparently written and illustrated between by soldiers at the front. It has a galaxy of drawings, extracts, and cartoons that reflect the Australian character, their courage, endurance and sense of fun. Lots of exaggerated cartoons of toffee officers, dark and desolate sketches of the trenches and jokes still with contemporary freshness. I like this one accompanied by a drawing of a digger on a stretcher: “Are you wounded, mate?” Victim: “D’yer think I’m doing this for fun?” The pages are brown and brittle but to my way of thinking it should be in an airconditioned glass case in the war museum and honoured like the Constitution. Maybe it will be one day.

My dad who had hardly left his hometown of Bothwell before World War II tells of spending his 21st birthday in an exotic Egypt of the 1940s wandering like some writer garnishing notes for a novel. But he was preparing for war. His cards home to an anxious family are fascinating but the favourite quip is how he and his friends, all privates, would walk past an officer and feign lifting their hand to salute then merely to brush their hair to watch the officer clasp boots together and snap to crisp attention and salute. I enjoy visualising that moment because it keeps him forever young and a scallywag. Occasionally they were admonished but the joke was done, and so very Australian.

Prime Minister Morrison has suffered that joke several times but for a different reason. On one occasion he even lifted a resistant hand so he could be seen shaking it for the cameras. It was so important to be viewed as an everyday and liked guy, but he is far removed from that concept and in our egalitarian society to have such privileges he needs to earn our respect.

Getting back to our firefighter, apparently the Australian public has taken him under its wing and donated money to his local pub at Batemans Bay so he and his mates can have a few schooners, on the house so to speak. I approve shouting your mates for a job well done. Now that is what the pub test is all about. The bushfire calamity though incredibly tragic has drawn the very best out of us and demonstrates that the Anzac spirit defines our heroic spirit and strength as a nation and we will overcome.

Hobart’s Craig Carnes is a part-time college and high school teacher.