Suffering and Community

Andrew Bolt reflects on the outpouring of giving following on the heels of the bushfire emergency

I COULDN’T give food. Too much had been donated already.

I was turned away from the Blood Bank. The queues are so long I was told to come back next week.

I could only give money, and tens of thousands of you have done that, too.

What an avalanche of help. Have your fellow Victorians ever shown themselves to be so good?

Our pain now is terrible. The loss immense. But this much we now know to our consolation: A fire can destroy our towns, but not our community.

In fact, never have I seen so many people so desperately eager to lend a hand. My God, but we are strong.

In these days no one walks taller than a volunteer of the Country Fire Authority, of course.

But see how many other of our institutions have rushed to help, too.

Our politicians, so unfairly mocked when all is well and we can afford to quarrel, have been brilliant. Premier John Brumby in particular has shown not just leadership, despite worries for his own property and family, but the compassion that’s too often hidden.

Our police are there in force, of course, and never has Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon’s busy warmth seemed so right.

Everywhere you turned, there were people rallying for the victims. ABC radio instantly turned itself into a 24-hour service for Victorians desperate to know about the fires or their missing relatives, or wanting to organise help or issue warnings. 3AW did the same, and became a place where people could talk over their fears, and reach each other.

I could go on. The State Emergency Service was again there. The army, too. Paramedics, nurses, doctors and surgeons skilled in burns rushed to their posts. And you know the public servants you joke about, if you think of them at all? They’re there, too, rushing through emergency payments, organising help. I know just how frantically my brother will be working.

And think of the priests, the Salvos, the Red Cross, and above all those neighbours and countless strangers, just pitching in. Did you every suspect there were so many people around you, ready to catch you should you fall?

It’s common in such huge relief operations for there to be days when the wheels are spinning, and people are frozen by the size of the calamity.

Not this time. This is no Hurricane Katrina effort. We were there in a flash.

Ours is a quarrelsome culture, quick to find fault. I’m a master of that game.

But look around and admire what we are. Better than we credit ourselves. Kinder than we sometimes allow. And bound closer than we may have feared.

Bound closer now than we were.