Black Summer: A Story of Australia. New documentary podcast launches next week

August 2019, central Queensland: The ground is parched, the air heavy, and there’s no sign of rain on the horizon. Within weeks, these bone-dry conditions would ignite one of the worst bushfire seasons in recorded history.

Through the voices of survivors, firefighters, scientists, politicians, and wildlife defenders, Black Summer – an eight-part documentary podcast from Brevity+ – uncovers not only the devastation but also the recovery, resilience, and what lies ahead as future fire seasons intensify.

In Beechmont, residents faced winds few had ever seen before,

“We had over 100 km/h winds. Just changing direction every microsecond in a major bushfire. It’s just like it’s an army of flames, you know. And then within that, the eucalypt leaves, they just explode.. Eucalypts don’t go into the rainforest, and the rainforest largely is self-extinguishing with a bushfire. We were standing there in 100/120kmph wind, with fire just going through tree tops, just like the roar of a jet engine,” says Steve in Episode 1.

Further south in Nymboida, longtime locals were caught off guard by the fire’s ferocity,

“The people who’ve been living here for 30 years, and they’d had fires before, and they knew what they were doing, they had pumps, they had water trailers, they had water, but the magnitude of the fire was such that no one anticipated it was going to have the impact that it did”, says Ros in Episode 2.

For those on the frontline, the experience was relentless

 “Things don’t always go according to plan, and you have long-term consequences… but you have to live with those, that’s what we do. That’s what we do as firefighters,” says Craig in Episode 3.

Episode one – ‘Rainforests don’t burn’ – is available on all streaming platforms on the 25th of September. Subsequent episodes will be published every Thursday.