Smoke Haze gets in your Eyes

For the past few weeks, smoke haze from mega-bushfires has been in everyone’s eyes. These bushfires are the worst on record. Exacerbating the bushfires burning around Australia is our long-standing drought. We seem to have entered a time of permanent fire and smoke.

Leaving windows open has become a risk assessment. The remains of a forest end up as black-flecks on my kitchen counter. A blackened leaf lying on my balcony chair, disintegrates into ash on touch.

It’s hard to tell where the smoke begins, but you know it’s there from the smell and the washed-out horizon. The smoke muffles other smells. It’s a miracle when the scent of flowers overrides the smell of smoke.

Light becomes lurid yellow and cities seem to vanish in filthy grey.

It’s hard to photograph smoke levels.

Morning sky, less smoke

Morning sky, more smoke

Afternoon sky, even more smoke

Smoke is more visible in comparison shots of a non-smoky day versus a smoky day.

Canterbury on different days

This photo of Sydney Harbour doesn’t really need a comparison shot, although due to the leached-out colours it appears to be from the 1960s.

This is a photo of Sydney’s new light rail taken on a smoky day. A slogan on the tram says, PLAY IT SAFE AROUND LIGHT RAIL. Maybe this slogan should be adapted for Sydney, saying something along the lines of PLAY IT SAFE AROUND SYDNEY AIR.

I also keep on coming across random references to smoke, drought and air, which I might have missed under less smoky circumstances.

Antigone Kefala’s Sydney Diary, writes about smoke invading Sydney from back-burning in the 1990s.

Dorothy Hewett’s Bobbin Up, published in 1959, describes nineteen- year-old pregnant Shirl riding on a motorbike behind her bloke through the inner city Sydney suburb of Newtown through air that’s thick with smoke blown in from the Blue Mountains.

In Marjorie Barnard’s The Dry Spell published in 1943, Marjorie describes a desiccated suburban landscape that’s completely sucked dry of all moisture.

Grass in a park in my area

I also recently came across the Japanese expression Kūki o yomu.

空気を読む

Non-literally it means reading a situation from non-verbal cues, a bit like picking up vibes. Literally it means air reading. The ability to read Sydney air would be very useful now.

Will all future weather reports automatically include an air quality index?

From the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment

When in bed half asleep, I sometimes see images of solid walls of flame as if the air has brought the message of fire to me from far away. Smoke and fire have become part of my consciousness.