COURAGE UNDER FIRE
Australian Women’s Weekly NZ|January 2020
In the midst of an unprecedented bushfire season, Susan Chenery pays tribute to the women firefighters who risk their lives to save others.
Susan Chenery
COURAGE UNDER FIRE

The noise. That’s what you don’t get in the footage and photos. The terrible, terrible noise of a big bushfire. The malignant sound of the wind as the fire sucks in the oxygen it needs to grow. The hissing and popping of eucalyptus trees, the explosions as they release their gases. Fires make their own weather, creating their own wind, lightning, black hail. “The noise,” says Liane Henderson, volunteer firefighter of 20 years standing, “is like jet planes.”

If we’re lucky we’ll never know what it’s like inside an uncontained fire. Liane does, and so do her firefighting colleagues. It’s dark, like an eclipse. “It can get very scary because you can get disoriented. It’s another world when you are out there, it really is.” An unpredictable fast-moving force of destruction, engulfing everything in its path. “I look at it as this beast I’ve got to stop,” says Liane, Acting Inspector for Rural Fire Service (RFS), Queensland. “It’s us against that, but every fire is different. These things have minds of their own.”

This is a season of fire. Australia is burning up. The fires that have raged across the eastern seaboard in these past months have been unprecedented – the sheer scale of them, coming so early in the driest spring ever recorded, with a ferocity that’s never been seen before. At the time of writing, more than 700 homes, six lives and over two million hectares have been lost in mega-fires that are breaking all records months before the start of the traditional fire season.

Fire, reported The Guardian, has never or rarely devoured rainforests, wet eucalypt forests, dried-out swamps, ancient forests in Tasmania that have not burned for 1000 years, but they’ve all burned this spring and summer. And as the fires escalate, Australia is in uncharted territory.

Denne historien er fra January 2020-utgaven av Australian Women’s Weekly NZ.

Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.

Denne historien er fra January 2020-utgaven av Australian Women’s Weekly NZ.

Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.

FLERE HISTORIER FRA AUSTRALIAN WOMEN’S WEEKLY NZSe alt
PRETTY WOMAN
Australian Women’s Weekly NZ

PRETTY WOMAN

Dial up the joy with a mood-boosting self-care session done in the privacy of your own home. It’s a blissful way to banish the winter blues.

time-read
3 mins  |
July 2024
Hitting a nerve
Australian Women’s Weekly NZ

Hitting a nerve

Regulating the vagus nerve with its links to depression, anxiety, arthritis and diabetes could aid physical and mental wellbeing.

time-read
5 mins  |
July 2024
The unseen Rovals
Australian Women’s Weekly NZ

The unseen Rovals

Candid, behind the scenes and neverbefore-seen images of the royal family have been released for a new exhibition.

time-read
2 mins  |
July 2024
Great read
Australian Women’s Weekly NZ

Great read

In novels and life - there's power in the words left unsaid.

time-read
2 mins  |
July 2024
Winter dinner winners
Australian Women’s Weekly NZ

Winter dinner winners

Looking for some thrifty inspiration for weeknight dinners? Try our tasty line-up of budget-concious recipes that are bound to please everyone at the table.

time-read
3 mins  |
July 2024
Winter baking with apples and pears
Australian Women’s Weekly NZ

Winter baking with apples and pears

Celebrate the season of apples and pears with these sweet bakes that will keep the cold weather blues away.

time-read
7 mins  |
July 2024
The wines and lines mums
Australian Women’s Weekly NZ

The wines and lines mums

Once only associated with glamorous A-listers, cocaine is now prevalent with the soccer-mum set - as likely to be imbibed at a school fundraiser as a nightclub. The Weekly looks inside this illegal, addictive, rising trend.

time-read
10+ mins  |
July 2024
Former ballerina'sBATTLE with BODY IMAGE
Australian Women’s Weekly NZ

Former ballerina'sBATTLE with BODY IMAGE

Auckland author Sacha Jones reveals how dancing led her to develop an eating disorder and why she's now on a mission to educate other women.

time-read
7 mins  |
July 2024
MEET RUSSIA'S BRAVEST WOMEN
Australian Women’s Weekly NZ

MEET RUSSIA'S BRAVEST WOMEN

When Alexei Navalny died in a brutal Arctic prison, Vladimir Putin thought he had triumphed over his most formidable opponent. Until three courageous women - Alexei's mother, wife and daughter - took up his fight for freedom.

time-read
8 mins  |
July 2024
IT'S NEVER TOO LATE TO START
Australian Women’s Weekly NZ

IT'S NEVER TOO LATE TO START

Responsible for keeping the likes of Jane Fonda and Jamie Lee Curtis in shape, Malin Svensson is on a mission to motivate those in midlife to move more.

time-read
5 mins  |
July 2024