AustLit

'The “academic summer” has long been a time of ritual: examining doctoral theses on beaches; Moodle site design cruelled by patchy wifi; plaintive emails from librarians seeking reading lists; the list goes on. Over the last decade, a new ritual has arrived: which of our colleagues found themselves in the path of climate disaster? Whose celebrations were tinged with anxiety? Even corresponding with authors and guest editors has become fraught: one editor was uncontactable after being evacuated from a fire near Victoria’s Grampians (Gariwerd) National Park. In one almost surreal development this summer, the Victorian Country Fire Authority dubbed a two-hour window that allowed some residents to temporarily return to their property to collect valuables and Christmas presents “Operation Yuletide”. We are fast running out of descriptors: the 2019–2020 Australian bushfire season was dubbed Black Summer, but for how long will that designation remain meaningful? Soon, if not already, all summers will be Black.' (Chris Hay, Jess Carniel : Editorial introduction)