Yesterday a book came into the library where I work. It was a children's picture book by someone from Melbourne; a self-published, rather poorly-written, extremely trite tale, as it turned out, about a summer holiday in Mallacoota that goes all wrong when a bushfire arrives and inconveniences a tourist family by burning down the narrator's holiday accommodation. I felt like throwing it across the library and jumping up and down on its glossy pages. The visceral nature of my reaction surprised me.
Mallacoota's time in the spotlight goes on. And on. And on. Hardly a day goes by without Mallacoota popping up in this or that news program or newspaper. Our real estate market has gone a bit mental and our long-term rental market is pretty much non-existent.
Some unscrupulous landlords (local and non-local) have made an absolute killing since the bushfire. The cash-grab has been quite an eye-opener.
It's embarrassing. It's changed the way I see the place where I live. It's changed the way I see catastrophe - it's become very evident that one person's catastrophe is another person's cash-cow.
At work we've had to put up signs asking tourists not to question staff (some of whom lost everything) about the fires. Insensitive comments and questions probe like pointy sticks into deep wounds. Some tourists seem surprised when they come here and find regrowth and rebuilding - "you'd hardly know there was a fire," they say, filming new houses and lush new greenery with something akin to disappointment. What were they expecting? Bodies in the street? The real scars of the fire, while still evident in some of the scenery, are inside the residents of this town, plodding along every day, rebuilding lives and minds and homes and businesses while looking after tourists.
Those real scars, it has to be said, are also inside the residents of towns up and down the east coast of Australia; towns that haven't received anywhere near the media attention, focus or financial help that picturesque Mallacoota has. Add guilt to the list of bad tastes in my mouth.
Oh dear, it would appear I have disaster-fatigue. I wonder whether other people feel the same way?
