Roof of the world

Gotta get it all done before Christmas is a refrain that I hear so often. Never sure why, because as far as I can tell, the world isn’t going to end on the 26th December. It’s probably so people can go into their break feeling like they have left nothing behind. Working in this industry, […]

Little Saigon

Structure fire. Footscray, was the message on the phone. Then the news said it was a fire in the market. Then it was Little Saigon, the Vietnamese market in Footscray. What was a structure suddenly had a whole new meaning. It was a market place, but it was more, a meeting place, a place of […]

The Dead Are Dead

If you buy no other book on disaster management and dealing with death and survival, then you cannot go past Collective Conviction, by Anne Eyre and Pamela Dix. It tells the story of Disaster Action, an organisation set up by family members after Britain’s “decade of disaster” to support, advocate, lobby, and change the way […]

Koyannisqatsi

These here be crazy times. Like most people, I am stunned that the orange one won. Make no mistake. Americans aren’t stupid, as much as we’d like to portray them that way, the same way we wanted to portray the English and the Welsh for voting to leave the EU. We live in extremely uncertain […]

Powerlines

Recent storms left the state of South Australia, and it’s 1.6 million residents totally without power, after a cyclonic storm blew in. Not before the power was back on, and with the help of some sloppy journalism, the storm had become a political stoush over renewable energy versus fossil fuels, with everyone up and including […]

Aberfan

At 9.15, 50 years ago, perched high above the school at Aberfan in South Wales, after heavy rain a tip gave way and a 13 metre slurry sped downhill at 90 kilometres an hour, striking the school, just as they were preparing for the day’s lessons. 116 children and 28 adults were killed. In an […]

100

As a kid, playing cricket, I always hoped I would score a century. My batting skills put paid to that. My grandfather started to clear a place on his mantelpiece on his 95th birthday for a telegram from the Queen. He made it to 97. I remember the excitement of getting paid in $100 notes […]

Living to tell the tale

I spoke today at Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre and RMIT Forum for International Day of Disaster Risk Reduction #IDDRR on personal stories of death and survival #LiveToTell I have been privileged, having been with many people, as they have taken their last breath, and passed from this world to the next. As a […]

Fifteen Young Men

As we Melburnians move through Grand Final week, there’s lots of talk about the tragedies of the Grand Final, of players not being selected because of injury or poor form. Or fans not getting tickets because of corporate greed. These things are sad, and heartbreaking when that’s what you have been working towards in your […]

Weatherman

My favourite Australian band The Panics, have released a new song, Weatherman. The Panics, like The Triffids before them, hail from Perth. You can feel the big West Australian sky in all of their music. It seems simple, five guys, pretty standard line up, nasally vocals. But the more you listen, the more you realise […]