Small voices, big stories

Jasper (81 years old)

Brisbane, Queensland

20th September 2019

Shouts and chants filled the air outside the apartment window. Jasper sat in his leather sofa, flicking through the Brisbane Times with age-spotted fingers. Lowering the volume of his hearing aid, Jasper once again tried to read the top line of the next paragraph. 

His eyes had barely skimmed the first few words when a loud crash followed by a chorus of outcries interrupted. Jasper’s eyes rolled heavenward as he slapped his newspaper closed against the worn arm of the sofa. 

Another protest! Bloody millennials…why can’t they just let a man read in peace? 

His watch read 8:13am. Shouldn’t they be in school?

Wheezing, Jasper eased himself slowly out of his chair. His back felt curved and stiff as if his spine had been replaced by a walking cane. Once on his feet, he shuffled towards the window and peered down at the street below. 

A large crowd brimmed the street like a river overflowing its banks. Undulating like a multicoloured serpent, people marched with handmade signs and shouted at the world as if it were indeed listening. His gaze snagged on a lanky, bearded man supporting a child who held up a large green and blue sign with the words ‘School strike for climate’. 

Ah, something else they want to blame our generation for.  

But surprisingly, Jasper saw that it was made up of people of all kinds. Mostly young, yes, but there were people like him protesting there too. He gaped as he noticed a woman with hair the colour of steel, pushed in a wheelchair as she thrust an anti-climate change sign in the air. The sign read,

#STOPADANI. WE DON”T WANT YOUR COAL OR YOUR POLLUTION. 

Jasper stepped back from the window, frowning at the guilt he felt settling in his stomach like oil atop of water. Blinking, he tried to rid the image of that sign from his mind but it was like the sight was branded onto the inside of his eyelids. Then another image begun to swim to the surface and this one, if anything, only set fire to the oiled guilt Jasper already felt roiling in his gut. 

There he was, in his early twenties with sweat beading along his full mop of hair as he worked long hours in the humid heat of the Carmichael coal mines. Jasper could sometimes still taste the dust swirling thick in his lungs and hear the hungry cries from his younger siblings when he’d get home late from work. 

He’d been 67 when he quit the mines, and the only reason he did was because his doctor had told him that his lungs were blacker than a city sky. 

A car honked several times from outside Jasper’s window and brought him back to the present moment. He couldn’t bring himself to look out the window again so instead ambled back to the sofa, finding comfort in the cracks of the peeling leather. Slouched once more, he dialled down his hearing aids and flicked open the newspaper. 

But despite the staticky silence, Jasper found his eyes refused to focus on the print. Instead, all he saw was the elderly lady rebelling in her wheelchair and the sign she stabbed in the air. The sign which deep down he felt was meant for him.

Arno (37 years old)

Canberra, ACT

20th September 2019

The world was changing, Arno felt it in his bones. The last two hours of the School Strike for Climate had left his arm aching from holding up his sign, and all the shouting had his throat feeling like it had gotten too friendly with a cheese grater. But Arno pulled the drink bottle from the bag slung around his waist, chugged a few mouthfuls and continued on. Blisters swelled and stung where his toes rubbed against his shoes but every step that Arno marched felt like a promise, one that he could not break by stopping. 

The air around him sparked with emotion, people shouting their cries for change in tandem and waving handcrafted banners high above their heads. In lopsided scrawl, Arno’s own sign read, 

South Africa is more than fossil fuels.

Arno recalled making his own sign from scraps of Bunnings cardboard and borrowed markers from the primary school he taught at. The past few weeks he had been explaining the importance of caring for the environment to his kindergarten students and encouraging their parents to attend the Strike for Climate Change. Some of his coworkers along with parents had stated their obvious disapproval of Arno participating in a strike that involved a day off school. But he had simply shrugged, replying, “If they can protest, let them protest. It’s their future too.” 

Arno didn’t tell them of his life before living in the quiet Australian capital city, Canberra. Of the childhood he spent growing up along the coast of South Africa with year after year of drought and sporadic rainfall. As an adult, Arno still cherished every sip of water brought to his lips. 

Nor did he tell them that protesting in South Africa was not the same peaceful endeavour it was here. Arno winced as he remembered the time he and his friends had been assaulted on the street for daring to speak up about the fossil fuel abuse in their town. That night Arno had spent his first and only night in jail. 

Now as he marched alongside other protestors of climate change, a sense of hope clanged through him. Arno heard his name shouted somewhere to his left and turned to see one of his students sat stop their father’s shoulders and holding a banner they had made in class. The sight caused a smile to stretch so far across his face that Arno didn’t doubt that his cheeks would ache for at least the next week. 

How lucky I am to call Australia home.

Tears crested along his lashes but Arno wasn’t ashamed to let them fall. He may not have been born in Australia but here in Canberra, he could see the effects of climate change taking place. The people of Australia shedding their skin like snakes. Arno wished his friends in South Africa could see this. 

Until then, I will hold my banner high and fight for both our lands. 

The thought brimmed with promise and Arno grinned. The world was changing, and he was damn well going to be a part of it.

Molly (6 years old)

Katherine, Darwin

20th September 2019

Molly gripped onto daddy’s fingers as tightly as she could and scampered to keep up with his long strides. They had been walking with a big crowd for what felt like hours and now finally stopped as all the protestors pooled inside 50 cent park. 

All around Molly people thrust colourful signs towards the sky and shouted, their voices sounding angrier than daddy’s when she refused to eat her broccoli. Molly couldn’t read what the signs said but the force with which these people marched made her lean closer towards her daddy. 

Why are they so angry with the sky? Molly thought as she stuck her thumb into her mouth. 

Immediately, she begun to feel a bit better. Molly didn’t care if the other kids said she wasn’t a baby anymore.

Suddenly a large woman stepped in front of Molly and shouted, her voice hoarse from overuse. “You’ll die of old age, we’ll die of climate change.” 

Molly flinched at her words. Die? Daddy hadn’t said people were going to die! Tears pricked Molly’s eyes and she tugged hard on her daddy’s hand. 

“Ow, Molly!” Her daddy glanced down at Molly, stopping when he saw fat rivulets of tears rolling down her round cheeks. Molly’s daddy stooped to pick Molly up and tucked her to his chest. Then he walked the two of them sideways out of the throng of people and sat on an empty bench parked beneath a gnarled gum tree. 

“Molly, sweetheart,” Molly’s daddy cupped her small face in his hands. “What’s wrong?”

Molly’s lower lip trembled as she spoke, “S-someone said we were going to die. I don’t want to die.” The last part of Molly’s sentenced dissolved into heaving sobs as her daddy hugged her close to his chest. 

“Shh darling, it’s okay. Nobody is going to die.” Molly’s daddy pulled her back to look in her eyes. “Do you remember what daddy told you was happening today?”

Still upset, Molly’s thoughts scattered in her brain like marbles on the school playground. But then she remembered and mumbled, “You said we were going on a big walk to save the Earth.”

Daddy nodded with a smile. “That’s right.”

“B-but why is everyone so angry? It’s scary.” Molly sniffled but her tears had mostly dried.

  “Sweetheart, do you know why some people get angry?”

Molly shook her head. 

“Sometimes people get angry because they’re scared. And right now, people are scared because they love the earth so much that they want to make sure it’s getting the best care possible.” Molly’s daddy tickled her side as he said, “Just like if you were sick, I would want to make you feel better.” 

Laughing, Molly imagined the Earth wrapped up her favourite Peppa Pig blanket, sipping hot chocolate through a TimTam. 

Molly watched as her daddy stood up from the bench and offered her a hand. “Do you think you’re ready to come back and save the Earth with me?”

Scooting off the seat, Molly once again grabbed her daddy’s hand. Only this time she wasn’t afraid.