Sinking Without Trace: Australia's Unknown Climate Change Victims

Independent UK. Posted May 7, 2008.

Ron and Maria Passi, who operate Murray Island's only taxi, were out driving the night the king tide struck. Neighbours flagged them down, asking for help, and so it was not until some time later that they saw their own grandchildren standing in the road. "They were shouting 'Granddad, stop the car, the water is coming in the house,'" says Ron. "I just slammed on the brakes."

The couple's son, Sonny, was outside his fibro shack with his five children, watching the monster surf, lashed by north-west winds, rise ever higher. In the commotion, everyone had forgotten that Sedoi, the baby, was still inside. They heard her crying and found her in her cot, covered in sand. Water had surged in after a wave picked up a big wooden pallet and flung it through the front wall.

No one on Murray had ever seen such a high tide before. Other islands in the Torres Strait, which lies between the far north-eastern tip of the Australian mainland and Papua New Guinea, have witnessed similar scenes in recent years. Houses, roads and graveyards have been flooded, and the locals believe they know the reason: climate change.

The low-lying islands that dot the sparkling waters of this region are facing similar challenges to South Pacific nations such as Kiribati and Tuvalu. But while the plight of those countries is well known and is regularly discussed in the international arena, few people outside Australia have even heard of the Torres Strait. Even Australians would have difficulty locating it on the map, and the remote islands -- accessible only by light plane -- receive few visitors.

Donna Green is one exception. A scientist at the University of New South Wales, English-born Dr. Green is educating the islanders about the possible impacts of climate change and ways in which they can adapt. She embarked on the project after discovering that no one else was doing it. In fact, although the Torres Strait is considered the most vulnerable area of Australia, it is barely on the radar, either as a subject of scientific research or a focus of government policy.

There is no action plan for the region, and the newly formed Department of Climate Change was unable to cite any studies relating to these northerly islands. A search for the words "Torres Strait" on the department's website yields no results.

Until the end of the last Ice Age, the strait was a land bridge connecting northern Australia with New Guinea. Some islands lie only a few miles off the Papua New Guinea coast, and the locals have more in common, ethnically, with the Melanesians of Papua New Guinea than the Aborigines of the Australian mainland. But they consider themselves proud Australians, and feel mildly aggrieved that it is not widely known that Australia has not one, but two indigenous races.

Six of the inhabited Torres islands are low-lying coral cays or swampy mud islands, with little or no elevation. As you fly over them, they look like smudges of green in a shimmering expanse of blue. Others are granite or volcanic, with some higher land. Even there, though, people are accustomed to living by the beach, their days revolving around fishing and collecting shells.

At dusk, walking along the water's edge on Murray Island, the scene is idyllic. A local man is fishing for mackerel with his young son, as shoals of sardines dart along in the shallows. Children play in the sand, and reggae music drifts from one of the simple houses built along the beachfront, in the shade of coconut palms and almond trees.

But, after generations of living by the sea, many locals no longer feel comfortable. Maria Passi says: "At night I can't sleep if the tide is high." Her house was flooded by the king tide as well as her son's. "There was water everywhere, and rubbish floating around, and coconuts under the bed," says her husband Ron, as his wife adds: "When I saw how it looked, I just sat down and cried."

Abnormally high tides are not the only phenomenon that the islanders have observed. The seasons are shifting, and the land is eroding. Birds' migration patterns have altered, and the turtles and dugongs (sea cow) that are traditionally hunted for meat have grown scarce. People are no longer certain when to plant their crops: cassava, yams, sugarcane, bananas, sweet potato.

Murray, home to about 400 people, is the birthplace of indigenous land rights. It was five Murray Islanders, led by Eddie Mabo, who brought a legal action contesting the idea that Australia was uninhabited and belonged to no one when the British arrived. After a landmark High Court decision in 1992, Aborigines and Torres Strait islanders regained ownership of their traditional lands. But now the land for which Mr Mabo fought so long and hard is being swallowed by the sea.

Dr. Green has organised workshops on the islands, offering information and practical advice. She has also held meetings with community elders in order to record their observations of weather patterns and environmental changes, in a project that blends traditional knowledge with Western science.

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