Loved ones, family, friends: in Australia this past week or so we have been reminded that these relationships are what really matter. People who lost all their possessions told us that the survival of loved ones was what they cared about. Many then mentioned their concern over family photographs, pets and farm animals.

These past 10 days, as terrible bush fires raged in the state of Victoria, we in Australia have been reminded of the strengths of humanity in times when “the chips are down”. Via the TV, radio and print media, we have witnessed kindness and love between shocked victims in the disaster area, great courage from the fire fighters who risked their lives for their communities and an outpouring of generosity and concern from people around Australia – and around the world.

We have been reminded that we are one human family.

On the night of Black Saturday, as February 7 has now been dubbed here, I lay awake in the dark listening to our national radio network, the ABC, relaying warnings to little towns across the Victorian countryside. I felt afraid for the people there and I felt connected to them. The next morning at church we prayed for the fire victims and their families; we felt empathy with them.

At that time, the death toll was given as “14 and expected to rise”. Tragically it did; the death toll as I write is 189, and expected to rise as recovery teams continue to search under collapsed, burn-out rubble, in smoked-out cellars, in charred cars.

Two nights after Black Saturday, as I again lay sleepless at about 2am, I heard a woman call in to ABC radio – they had talkback lines open – to say she was awake watching fire on a distant mountain as her family lay in bed. She wanted to be awake to alert them if the wind suddenly changed and the fire raced towards their community. She felt very much alone. But she wasn’t. In minutes another woman, just streets away in the same town, phoned in to say she was watching too. Then there was another caller watching fire on the same mountain from a different aspect. The frightening darkness became peopled by unseen neighbours. A woman from the north-eastern state of Queensland, a listener who was more than a thousand miles from the fires, called in to offer encouragement. So did a man in the United States, and an Australian expatriate in the US. The Victorians were not alone.

Later last week, we saw Sam the Koala accepting a drink of water from firefighter David Tree (in pictures taken during earlier bush fire control work). It was a heart-warming image and I was surprised to learn that it was flashed around the world, though I guess I should have known it had universal appeal.

Firefighters from other Australian states, including my own state of New South Wales, volunteered the help the Victorian fire fighters as soon as they saw the scale of the disaster. And now we also have fire fighters and disaster recovery specialists from New Zealand, the US and Indonesia who have flown in to lend a hand.

There has been love, friendship and kindness on a grand scale; humanity at its best.

Of course, there has been another side: numbers of the fires are thought to have been deliberately lit and one suspect has been charged. There have been one or two thefts of some of the relief donations that have poured in from across Australia.

But the good side of humanity has been overwhelmingly more in evidence than our bad side. That is the message from our tragedy.

There is, however, also a second reminder: that the overwhelming force of nature is beyond our control.

The fires – there were and are still are many of them across Victoria – started in bush land that was tinder dry during fiercely hot weather. Although the Victorian Country Fire Authority has many experienced volunteers, once fires got out of control in the extreme conditions of February 7 and 8, no human force could stop them.

So, lesson two, we must take climate change seriously. And remember we are a global human family.

Image Courtesy of DayLife - Firefighters use a hose to quench embers at a fire at Chum Creek, near Healseville, north east of Melbourne, Australia Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2009. Officials believe arson may be behind at least some of the more than 400 fires that tore a destructive path across a vast swath of southern Victoria state over the weekend (11/02/09). - Photo from AP Photo by Rick Rycroft

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