Bushfires, the lives they take and diminish, the lands they leave blackened, and their unbelievable force, set the human activities which we usually regard as of vital importance, like banking, administration and politics, within their proper framework. In the face of a fire that in a couple of hours can run 40 km from mountains to sea, these are incidental occupations. In the face of the sudden and terrible death of about 100 people, financial troubles are put into perspective.
The central realities are the uncontrollable power of the fire and the spirit of the human beings who endure and engage with it. Science and crystallised experience count, but ultimately the moves that the fire makes and the success of the engagement are unpredictable. One house is taken, another is left. One family dies; another escapes.
Those who stay to endure the fire bring with them little more than their simple humanity. Courage, generosity, prudence, empathy, compassion and solidarity are words that come to mind to describe people's attitudes.
I was struck in particular by the exchange between radio reporters and fire service officers who reported on the fire fronts. The reporters, as is their job, invited the fire officers to make quick judgments for their audience. Was this person stupid who went into his property in shorts and thongs, or this family who tried to drive through a fire front? Was this bushfire worse than Ash Wednesday?
The officers would evade the questions. No one could know what necessity led particular people to do dangerous things. Fire fighters, focused on saving life and livelihood, would find it inconceivable to make comparisons of this fire to other fires. The officers' focus was on the heartbreaking human dimensions of the bushfires.
The simple human reality of the bushfires has been of a shared and simple humanity: shared struggle, shared loss, shared tears, sharing of small resources like food and blankets, sharing of accommodation. Those involved at the fire front have shared this directly; others vicariously.
The Governments have responded at the same level. Victorian Premier John Brumby showed himself to be properly overwhelmed by the destructive power of the fire and by the death and suffering it brought to so many people.
He saw it as involving the Victorian community, and not simply individuals. He recognised the gallantry shown by those who were involved in facing and fighting the fires. He asked those not directly involved to keep those affected in their thoughts and prayers, to give help where possible, and to contribute to the fund.
And he promised modest but sustained help from governments. He spoke as a human being with a Premier's responsibility, not as a Premier who happened to be a human being.
This immediate sense of solidarity will inevitably be tested by the frustrations and angers that are natural to grief. People who are in everybody's thoughts in their immediate loss, slip from mind during the slow processes of their rebuilding.
But the first shock of these bushfires makes us ask instinctively what really matters to us as human beings. The stories of death and escape from death remind us that our lives are a gift, a vulnerable gift. The way in which people have faced and fought the fires is an enormously encouraging response to these questions.
These things also judge the way in which we evaluate and address what matters in the metaphorical bonfires lit in the economy.
Andrew Hamilton is the consulting editor for Eureka Street. He also teaches at the United Faculty of Theology in Melbourne.
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