I AM A child of the Anthropocene, born in 1953. I have lived in a period of history also known as the ‘Great Acceleration’. The speed and scale of material change since 1953 is breathtaking, so much so that I sometimes feel I am a passive observer of this change, not a participant. I struggle to contemplate it all, bogged down within a form of magical realism where the uncanny, fantastic, disruptive and improbable weave in and out of what once was predictable phenology, the patterns and rhythms of life.

That foundational phenology – the phases of the moon, the Earth’s tilt and spin, the seasons, animal migration – is still with us, yet it is being warped and corrupted by the human power to change…everything. The normal and the ‘new normal’ are being replaced by the ‘new abnormal’, and this has powerful consequences for human physical and mental health. The new abnormal has seen the imposition of terrifying change in landscapes. Even as I write, in early 2020, wildfire has immolated huge swathes of Australia and continues to threaten many other communities, including my own property in the Hunter Region of New South Wales.