Before Covid-19 colonised our imaginations and claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, 2020 looked set to be remembered for a different calamity. From December 2019 and into 2020, fires burned in Australia like never before. By their end, they had affected more than one billion animals, displaced almost twice that number, razed some 20 million acres of land (a surface area the size of many small countries combined) and emitted so much toxic smoke that, if the fires were a nation, they would have ranked as the sixth most polluting one in the world.
It was a global catastrophe, and a global spectacle. As footage of the fires spread around the world, a nation known for its sun, golden sands and unique wildlife became identified with a darker iconography: towering infernos raging through the bush, children in gas masks, blood red skies, and charred animals trapped in barbed wire, trying to flee the flames.
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