WESTERN COVE HISTORY
Page 7
2020 — FIRE
On January 8, 2020, Adelaide sweltered in 42oC heat; and Kangaroo Island was on fire.
Prime
Minister Scott Morrison visited disaster areas in the morning and Vivonne Bay was evacuated in the afternoon.
January 9th saw blustery winds from multiple directions. Fires jumped
containment lines and approached
Parndana whose inhabitants evacuated to Kingscote.
In the afternoon fire advanced along the Cygnet. Roads into Kingscote
were closed to traffic. And a fire danger alert was broadcast for Kingscote airport and Nepean Bay. The fire was only about 12 km from Western Cove.
CHRONOLOGY of the 2019–2020 BUSHFIRES
September 2019: Following a 2-year drought and Australia's driest spring on record bushfires start in eastern Australia.
November
11: A state of emergency is declared in Queensland. On Eyre
Peninsula in SA uncontrolled fire is heading toward Port Lincoln.
November 12: Catastrophic fire danger is declared in the
Greater Sydney region for the first time since the introduction of this
level in 2009.
November 20: Fire on Yorke Peninsula
threatens Yorketown and Edithburgh.
December 17: The average maximum temperature, Australia-wide, is 40.9oC making this Australia's warmest day in modern history, beating the previous record of 40.3o on January 7, 2013.
December 18-20: Three days of 44o in Adelaide. Fires start in the Adelaide Hills, Flinder's Chase (KI), and Western Australia.
December 23: More than 100 bushfires are burning in NSW.
December 28:
An evacuation order is issued for Gippsland (eastern Victoria).
January 3: Fires reach Kosciuszko National Park (southwest of Canberra).
January 3: On KI fire destroys the Southern Ocean Lodge ("Australia's celebrated multi
award winning lodge") at Hansen Bay.
January 4: Australia-wide hundreds of major fires are burning. A 400km section of Eyre Highway linking South Australia and Western Australia is closed. Australia's
east coast from Eastern Victoria up to Bateman's Bay in NSW is a
disaster area. Firestorms from Nowra in NSW to Victoria threaten to destroy coastal communities up to Mount Kosciuszko. Some fires have flames up to 60 metres high. Thousands of people are being evacuated on ships.
The Weekend Australian (January 4-5) reports:
On
the NSW south coast ... The historic town of Cobargo is all but gone.
About 100km to the north, the community of Lake Conjola surrendered 89
homes... Malua Bay, 300km south of Sydney looked like it had been
bombed... Tens of thousands of people are expected to pour out of East
Gippsland over coming days...
January
5: The Sunday Mail reports that the Prime Minister is committing 3000 army
reservists to help battle the fires. 100 American firefighters have
also arrived. On page 9 we read:
Defence
aircraft yesterday evacuated people from the small town of Omeo as
nightmare conditions fuelled the bushfires raging in Victoria's east.
About
200km further north, firefighters were desperately defending the town
of Corryong for the second time in a week as an enormous blaze crossed
the border into NSW....
Residents
in dozens of alpine towns were told it was too late to leave, and
urgently sought shelter as a wind change brought strong gusts and
helped out-of-control blazes swell in size ... 73 fires had started in
the past two days with 53 still out of control last night...
January 7: Smoke from the Australian bushfires reported 11,000 kilometres away over South America!
NEPEAN BAY ALERT
January
9th: Fire isolates Kingscote and an alert is declared for Nepean Bay.
It looks like Western Cove could be threatend the next day.
January 10th: On KI cooler weather, reduced
wind speeds, rainfall, and the arrival of more firefighters stops
further advance of the fire toward Nepean Bay. The Weekend Australian reports:
...an extra 55 firefighters had
been rushed to the Island on Friday to bolster the 280 personnel who
bore the brunt of the overnight crisis that pushed to extreme the
threat to life and property. (January 11-12, p. 5)
In NSW, 3300 firefighters continued to battle "more than 130 blazes."
January 13th:
Homes destroyed Australia-wide from bushfires estimated at 3000.
More
firefighters have arrived from the USA, Canada, New Zealand and other countries.
On KI blustery
conditions and heat return, flare-ups continue to occur, and the fire-front is 120km wide. The website adelaidenow.com.au reports:
Emergency
services are working around the clock to contain the Kangaroo Island
bushfire... About
450 personnel, including 388 firefighters as well as Australian Defence
Force members and police remain on the ground battling the fire and
putting in place preventative measures. Water bombers have ... made 960
drops since the blaze started... Thirty engineers from the New Zealand army have arrived on the island to help with recovery efforts...
January 16-21:
Rainfall over eastern Australia from Gippsland to Queensland
douses some of the 100 fires still burning.
January 20:
On Kangaroo Island the CFS, SES and Australian Defence Force personnel clear roads, reinforce containment lines, and do control
burns. Flare-ups continue to occur but are dampened by further rain on
the night of January 22.
The
bushfires have burnt almost half of Kangaroo Island, taken two lives, destroyed 87
homes and hundreds of sheds and outbuildings, killed more than 50,000
sheep and cattle, decimated commercial forestry plantations and native flora and fauna,
and destroyed major facilities such as the Southern Ocean Lodge,
Vivonne Bay Lodge, Hanson Bay Cottages, Western KI Caravan park, etc.
February 1: Soaking rain occurs over South Australia including KI and Adelaide.
In January the Bureau of Meteorology released data identifying 2019 as
Australia's hottest and driest year on record. Worldwide, 2019 was the world's second warmest year since records began, and 2010-2019 was the warmest decade.
HIGH
TIDES and the FUTURE
The land surface at
the eastern end of the Western Cove township is
lower than the
western side. Several times since 2000 high tides advanced over the
Esplanade and sea water surrounded several houses, but
not deep enough to flood the interior of any house. In 2017 resurfacing
of the Esplanade elavated it by about 30 cm. One resident on the
Esplande said that since then no high tide has reached her
property.
The Kangaroo
Island Council Development Plan (2014) allows for a 30cm
sea level rise in the next 50 years in agreement with the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Following the
December 2015 Paris climate-change talks New Scientist magazine reported:
|
"SEA
LEVEL RISE
A deal may have been
done in Paris, but the seas will still rise by at least 5 metres,
according to figures released in June. The main reason is the
unavoidable loss of glaciers. Worryingly, this process is likely to
accelerate as more ice is exposed to warmer temperatures. How quickly
it might happen is still unclear, but it could be within a couple of
centuries." (19/26 December, 2015, page 35) |
The National
Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration (USA) predicts that sea levels will rise
between
20cm and 2 metres by 2100. If the higher estimate turns out correct
then within the lifetimes of today's children Western Cove will
be under water. Anyone who builds or buys a low-lying house with the
hope of keeping it in the family for his grandchildren to inherit might
want to keep sea-level predictions in mind.
Some of the new houses at Western Cove, especially along the Esplanade, have been built on posts
up to two metres high. Coastal erosion is evident along much of the
beach.
REFERENCES for history pages 1 to 7:
Books:
Cameron, R.C. 1971 Australia
History And Horizons, Weidenfeld
& Nicolson
Cockburn, R. 1990 South
Australia What's in a Name?, Axiom
Publishing
Cordes, N. 1986 Kangaroo Island 184
Great Years, The Island Press
Flinders, M. 1814 Voyage to Terra
Australis, Undertaken For the Purpose Of Completing the Discovery Of
That Vast Country, Volume 1,
G. & W. Nicol, pp 168-169
Montgomery
Martin, R. 1835 History of the
British Colonies Volume IV Possessions
in Africa And Austral-Asia, J. Cochrane and Co.
Scott, E. 1911
(Second Edition) Terre
Napoleon A History of French Explorations and Projects in
Australia
Websites:
National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-sea-level
Accessed February 3, 2017
http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/baudin-nicolas-thomas-1753
http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/flinders-matthew-2050
http://books.google.com/
http://boundforsouthaustralia.net.au/bfsa-vessels/africaine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew-Flinders
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks/e00067.html
http://trove.nla.gov.au/
https://disasterphilanthropy.org/disaster/2019-australian-wildfires/.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019–20_Australian_bushfire_season.htm
https://sites.google.com/site/kipaview/featured-family-tree/broadbent/ephraim-steen-bates
https://sites.google.com/site/kipaview/history/journal-of-robert-fisher
https://sites.google.com/site/kipaview/history/kangaroo-island-1905
www.abc.net.au/investigators/captains/baudin.htm
www.ozburials.com/CemsSA/saust.htm
www.slsa.sa.gov.au/encounter/baudinsvoyage.htm
