The day the desert dust came downtown

With fire alarms clanging and wailing in every direction and fire engines scattering to all points of the compass, Sydney awoke to an eerie pre-dawn orange Armageddon this morning, right on the Spring Equinox. Ferries were shut down and flights diverted by the desert dirt blown in on gale-force winds. Confused people huddled on windy footpaths in the diffuse light of Victoria Street, Potts Point, evacuated from their buildings by fire alarms set off by the dust.

In Kings Cross, bemused backpackers wandered the streets with cameras, wondering “Is it a fire?”

Nothing changes some people’s routine – even as radio stations warned people not to go out and breath the dust, men and women doggedly jogged along the Woolloomooloo waterfront though the dim haze, every second person also coughing from the Plane Tree seeds blowing in the wind and catching in the throat.

The extraordinarily bright pre-dawn light was caused by high-altitude dust catching sunlight before it had risen on Sydney.

While weather is not the same as climate, few can remember having seen this previously in Sydney. One radio caller said 1939. It’s an eerie portent as the world’s leaders meet in New York for the Climate Change Summit and Federal Parliament is locked into a standoff about an Emissions Trading Scheme which, even if passed into law, would leave Australia firmly rooted in the past, a coal-burning, car-driving polluter.

by Michael Gormly