Australian apocalypse
Cape Breton man living Down Under shocked by bushfire devastation
GLACE BAY — When Bobby Clements was planting eucalyptus trees and counting koalas on Kangaroo Island, he never imagined much of the lush, green haven for wildlife would be destroyed a few months later.
Clements, a 29-year-old Glace Bay native, arrived in Australia in February and since then he’s been exploring the continent and photographing wildlife. While he now lives in Perth, his journey began on the southeast coast where the deadly bushfires have been particularly devastating.
In July, he and his thengirlfriend spent two weeks on Kangaroo Island, helping a local woman transform her 300-acre farmland property into a bushland sanctuary for native wildlife like koalas, kangaroos, wallabies and echidnas.
“I have an attachment to that place and I have memories there,” Clements told the Cape Breton Post. “It was a highlight of my trip to Australia and it will be a highlight for the rest of my life, the people that I met there, the wildlife that I saw there, the experience that I had there — planting eucalyptus trees during the day and going to spot koalas after that then going to see what beaches are around. It’s just a really, really beautiful island.”
Since September, wildfires have ravaged much of Australia, killing a reported 28 people, an estimated one billion animals and burning more than 100,000 square kilometres of land — about twice the total area of Nova Scotia.
The bushfires began burning on Kangaroo Island before Christmas, but conditions worsened in early January.
Now half of the 4,400-squarekilometre island, which is home to several nature reserves and unique subspecies, is believed to have been razed by the fires, leaving behind the charred remains of thousands of koalas, kangaroos, wallabies and birds in a scene one wildlife rescuer described as “nothing short of apocalyptic.”
“I feel bad for people losing their homes because they might have attachment to it, they might have lost some sentimental items that are in their home, but they can just rebuild it — it’s made out of material, literally. It’s the wildlife, especially the koalas. The kangaroos can kind of hop away — they have a chance, they have good smell, they can get out of there pretty fast. The koalas are just stuck up a tree,” said Clements. “The eucalyptus trees that the koalas need to eat, they have so much oil in them that the trees are exploding — the trees are exploding with koalas trapped up on top of them.”
Clements explained that he had always wanted to travel to Australia ever since he was a boy. He said he spent much of his childhood outside catching snakes and frogs to escape an abusive home life. And whenever he read books on reptiles, Down Under inevitably came up.
Last year, he and his now ex-girlfriend were living in Toronto when they we decided to sell everything they owned and travel the world. With only a couple of backpacks and a camera bag, they first went to Thailand and Vietnam before heading to Australia on a holiday working visa.
“You should see the photograph my girlfriend took of me when we were just about land in Sydney for the first time and I was starting to realize that I was about to land in Australia and tears were just streaming. It was crazy,” he said.
Clements said he’d like to live in Australia permanently. He’s currently working at an Ikea in Perth while he hones his wildlife photography skills, which you can follow on his Instagram page, @bobbyclementsphoto.
“Before I came here I had no idea about anything about photography — I just liked taking photos on my phone and I had some experience videotaping skateboarding when I was a child. As far as learning how to use a camera, that’s all been trial and error over the last year,” he said.
“Most people don’t get to take photos as much as I do because I’ve been living out of a car for four months as I drive around different parts of Australia, getting to see all these amazing landscapes and wildlife.
“Every day was ‘what do I get to see what I can take a photo of,’ pretty much. Now that I have Internet connection and power all the time, I can sit down with all the photos I gathered and actually see what I have.”