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https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-12-15/rising-ocean-threat-to-island-culture-torres-strait-australia/104613496>
"Uncle Paul Kabai steps barefoot along a beach near a fallen sacred tree and
onto the mud and broken coral edging his Torres Strait island home. He looks to
the horizon and listens to the sea.
“I can tell when it’s going to rain or I can tell there will be an easterly
blowing tomorrow,” he says.
“I can tell by the seas and the waves.”
The tidal flat is littered with dead sea almond trees, roots clawing at the
tropical air. Others strain out of the mud and seawater, soil washed from their
bases by the scouring tides.
Saibai people have long buried the umbilical cords of newborns beneath these
trees while whispering the names of the wind and stars as gifts to the infants.
Where Uncle Paul stands, islanders once grew yams, taro, pineapples and
bananas, camping on the warm sands while they tended the crops.
“But you can’t put anything here now,” he says and points across the mud
towards the sea.
“Where the water is now, we used to camp there.
“See the mangroves? That’s where the actual beach was.”
He raises a hand to show how deep the water gets when the king tides surge in.
With each incursion by the rising waters, with every tree, campground and
farming plot reclaimed by the ocean, the people of Saibai Island feel their
culture, their children’s futures and their ancestral roots dissolving beneath
their feet.
But Uncle Paul and the other islanders are not ready to let all that slip
quietly beneath the waves, out of sight and mind of the rest of Australia.
He’s taken the fight, and the island’s existential plight, 3,000 kilometres
south to the dry and formal environs of the Federal Court in Melbourne."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics