Summer will we ever be able to love you again? Or have you become a time of great loss and fire? To all those affected I am sorry.

I am sorry for all of us for the situation we are in is complex enough to be difficult to grasp. I am sorry too because there are many who get it and those who don’t. I am sorry because there are people who are deliberately funding misinformation making it almost impossible for us to implement solutions.

Science is not ‘belief’…and to those choosing to read anything other the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report I ask why?  Why would you choose to place your trust, your science on anything other than a report produced by academics from the best universities around the world who are telling us we have produced an unstable untenable climate. We have.

If you are choosing to accept the opinion of lone journalists, or of scientists that have no peer review reports or that sit on the fringe then you must have a motivation for doing so…and what is your motivation?

Anthropogenic climate change. That is what 230 climate scientist contributors have called it in the IPCC report.

We have changed the Australian landscape, we have introduced rabbits, foxes, wiped out the Tasmanian tiger, completely changed the biology of rivers and streams, drained wetlands, caused the extinction of thousands of animals and yet for some reason there are those who will not believe that we have also changed our climate.

Cities change climates. Urban environments cause the urban heat island affect. A well-documented microclimate change. We have indeed the power to change our climate. In my cool temperate garden I can grow avocados by simply creating thermal mass walls around my plant, or by establishing wind breaks.

We have been warned over and over again but for many and many still climate change just does not fit the prevailing world view: the environment is separate from us and business and products and selling and jobs are always more important than the environment around us…around us ..but it is in us, part of us, it is us.

It is so difficult to see and to accept that we have a Pentecostal prime minister who believes that sins can be forgiven through death, burial and resurrection of jesus christ and that humanity is at the mercy of god.

With this belief system in tact our prime minister, he who shall not be named, is leading, not-leading our country.

There is no need to lead if god is your authority. And the fires are probably viewed as gods intention, and god will provide for the non-sinners and for the rest… a holiday to hell.

You must all have seen the photo of our prime minister holding his hand high in the air praising god. He is a true believer and hence there is no place for science in this belief system. Science discredits god, science intervenes and competes with god.

My family is safe for now…in this moment our beautiful land, our soil, our trees, our sky is not on fire.

This summer we have planted hundreds of seedlings, tomatoes, corn, zucchini, eggplants, capsicums, pumpkins, kale.

Every day I start by visiting the chickens to give them grains and fresh water, to harvest eggs and during hot weather to spray them with water to cool them down. I create puddles in the soil where they can lie down and soak up the cool wet earth.

We have our first chicks, born to their silver laced Wyandotte mother.

I have planted 4 rows of tomatoes, with a few hundred plants, and rows of zucchini and pumpkin.

I have raked the chicken litter from their run and used it as fertiliser for tomatoes and corn.

I have harvested peas and planted pea seeds among the corn, may they climb their stalks.

Every morning I go into the greenhouse and water my plants there – radicchio, basil, eggplants, capsicums, lime trees, avocadoes and lemongrass.

In the kitchen garden ORTO one I have three triangle beds with a total of five separate watering systems. I water bed one for 5 or 10 mins depending on the weather, then bed two, then three, then four and five. As we have had intense heat I have started watering the berries. Two rows at a time. My mobile phone a constant companion. The alarm going off all day. Turn the first two rows off and open the next two rows, alarm on, alarm off, next two rows, alarm on alarm off.

I have dragged my 100m hose to the paddock to water chestnuts, walnuts and hazelnuts.

Yesterday I saw a snake. My heart leapt out of me and then fell back in. It was laying still and curled around my chestnut tree. Its skin charcoal black and textured. It was very, very beautiful. I wanted to touch it, hold it, drape it around my neck. I wish they were not poisonous, it would be so wonderful to be able to handle them.

The garden has more flowers than last year, and that brings me joy.

This summer I hope, hope, hope that I will be harvesting pumpkins, zucchinis, eggplants, potatoes, cucumbers, more peas, capsicums, corn and of course lots of tomatoes.  

I hope I hope I hope.