The following message is from a video clip sent by Jennie and Dr Bob Teasdale and shared with Pilgrim members via their on-line Easter Day service 2020.
Jennie (AM) and Bob (Deputy Mayor of KI) continue to be involved in providing support for Kangaroo Island schools through their Children’s Bushfire Fund.
Bush Fire Smoke Tarnishes the Setting Sun
Kangaroo Island’s summer of catastrophic fires began on December 20. Days became weeks and still the Ravine Fire Storm raged, sulked, exploded and ravaged, consuming almost half our Island. Islanders grieved for our manifold losses. Livelihoods, lives, homes, sheds, livestock, destroyed; bushland, fences, pastures, wildlife decimated. The familiar Island world we knew inexorably changed.
But other people cared. You, our Pilgrim Community, reached out and shared, laying a foundation for hope.
Australia Day 2020 – KI Re-gathers
As fires still smoldered, we gathered as a fragile community. On that day, Australia’s Day, KI began its silent, tentative journey of recovery.
At our airport, a temporary town emerged overnight. Members of the Australian Defence Force – 700 of them – came with truckloads of skill, goodwill and hope. With military precision they started the clean-up, doing everything and anything with care, carefulness and unconditional giving.
They made us feel safe. They buoyed us up. They attended to our fragility and helped us re-grow our hurting community. They offered us hope.
The RE-Growth Tree
People began calling our Island’s western end ‘The Black’. Stark, charcoaled tree trunks, hectares of eddying ash, contorted remains of buildings, dead livestock and deceased wildlife, dismayed and silenced us.
But already another silent miracle was manifesting itself. Post-fire fungi catapulted into life. Soon after insects and soil creatures emerged; echidnas, goannas and snakes explored their changed terrain. Remnant populations of kangaroos, possums, wallabies – even rare dunnarts – appeared, searching for food. The eucalypt forest and the amazing grass-trees sprouted. Seven year old Poppy, let loose on the fire ground with her Mum’s mobile, took this picture and named it ‘RE- Growth’.
Hope comes in the strangest guises. Here it is captured through a camera lens and the eyes of a child. Nature does it without a fanfare.
Hope in a New Day’s Dawning
We here on KI are right now in a complex, multifaceted Recovery Phase. Questions line up like a million ants as we work to rebuild our compromised community. But we are discovering ‘how’ and we are moving forward. Like the regrowth on the blackened eucalypt, we too will regrow, regroup and recover. We see and feel signs of hope. It’s fragile – but it’s real.
Postscript
And now the pandemic impacting us all … a silent, invisible, potentially soul-destroying force … changing our world.
Let us look for signs of hope. Together we must strengthen our resolve and move toward a new future. By connecting and caring for each other, we can create a stronger, more coherent, responsive community.
God of the ages, help us, strengthen us and guide us in this unchartered place. Be our road map, our inspiration for this unknown journey.