Sydney woke early today. Very early. The southerly buster slammed through the city rattling windows and shaking trees. The wind brought dread. Half-awake thoughts turned to the towns on the edges of fire, battling to keep the beast at bay. In the dark we wondered, are they okay? What does this mean for them? Have we lost more?

It’s hard to imagine that there is more to lose. But there is. New South Wales has been shattered by these fires. I doubt that there is a district on the coast that hasn’t been affected. The fires are burning inland, too. And south and west. The north burnt early, much earlier than expected, taking out rainforests and places that have never been so dry, never burned before. Updates from the New South Wales Premier and Fire Commissioner today suggest that our months of reckoning are easing, in this State at least. We have a seven-day reprieve before the weather turns again. It’s the longest break we have had in months. Those at the front lines will turn their efforts to consolidation, preparation for the next attack, repair and rest. Please, I hope they take some rest.

The air where I live is thick with the smell of ash. It’s the smell you smell after you throw water on a campfire. It’s earthy and thick, grounded by the rain that came with the wind. I am cautiously opening windows, letting the cool damp air into the house. So far, no coughing fits.

I am one of the lucky ones. I live in a major city and my house is not at risk of burning down. But even as a lucky one, I count myself as one of the affected. When this all started, back in late October 2019, I came down with bronchitis. Now, any length of smoke exposure leaves me hacking, and vomiting. We are a city of five million people, and there will be others out there, like me, choking under the weight of the smoke. We who have the resources invest in expensive air purifiers, if we can source them. The first thing we check in the morning is the air quality reading, displayed on apps that we’ve shared in social groups with tips on where to buy P2 masks. The lifeguards at my swimming pool wear those masks now. We all do on bad days. We don’t know what this smoke is doing to us.

I have been wanting to write for a long time, since this started really. Write about the thick drifts of ash and burnt matter that I’ve swum through at Bondi on more days than I can count. About the burnt gum leaves and dead birds at the shoreline. About the ash that falls from the sky and dirties our clothes, blankets our cars, grits our eyes and coats our tongues. Write about the evil red sun, that we stare at, fearfully, with unshaded eyes. We are living in the ashes of our forests, our animals, our homes. We are reminded daily of the emergency that we have been warned about, and done nothing about, for decades. We are angry. So very, very angry.

But for months I have not been able to stop scrolling. I live with a new and specific kind of anxiety, fearful of the next really bad smoke day, and all that that means. I won’t reel off the numbers of lives lost, homes lost, animals feared lost. You know the figures. We’re in the tens and thousands and millions and billions – and they’re gone forever. To write: what a pointless act amidst the chaos. What can it achieve when we’re coughing and scrolling and fleeing and fighting?

I was in Bega as the smoke and the flames closed around the city like a fist, darkening the sky with ash, falling on our cars like grey snow. I was fortunate to spend just one night living the horror of not knowing what the day would bring, not knowing if we could get out. After a night of coughing and troubled sleep, we decided to try. We fled early, over the only road open – an unsealed road through a dry forest winding through the country behind Bega – leaving my Mum, Dad and Aunty behind.

We made it through, fires escorting us all the way back to Sydney. The sky over the eight-hour drive was alternately orange and grey and dark like night. The temperature outside the car at one point reached 46-degrees.

It was New Years Eve. At midnight, as fireworks erupted across the city, I was curled up in bed, crying, overcome by sadness and unable to celebrate anything.

While I left, the fight continued all along the south coast of New South Wales. The New Year brought terror and a red sky that defies description. I spent many of the days following sharing messages with my family, and to and from colleagues, who were taking shelter on a wharf, in tugboats, doing what they could to protect and calm the people of Eden.

Volunteers were left to defend a navy artillery base with nothing but the town’s commercial maritime fleet for support. The navy pulled in the day following the fire. Too late. The chip mill, the town’s main source of employment and industry, is still burning. My Aunt has been living in the shadow of the fire since we fled. There’s nothing we can do but tell them we’re here, and we care. When the time is right, when it is safe and the roads are open again, we will return and do what we can.

This is beyond a wakeup call. This is a war and the war started long ago without the great majority of us realising it. We are well behind and we all need to catch up.

I urge you: do what you can. Speak up. Respond to doubters’ thoughts, feelings and beliefs with facts. Do not remain quiet. Demand change, make changes to the way you live, and where you spend your money. This is my commitment.

This singular act, this piece of writing, will achieve very little. But together our voices are amplified. We are making change. We must not forget this terror, this taste of ash, this new and unholy, specific type of anxiety. We must not forget.