A well known American website has been under fire recently for a very brief post that they made about a photo that was taken here in Australia.
I’ve looked over their pages and I get it. They make fun. They find humor. They add funny little tag line’s and gossip about celebrities.
Here’s a snap shot of the post in question. You can also see it, and the rest of the web site here.
I guess it’s not the making fun of something Australian that has bothered me so much. I could really care less. It’s the fact that they chose THIS photo to make fun of.
The fire’s have killed almost 200 people. They’ve taken eight or nine hundred home’s and completely wiped out entire communities. Beautiful communities. The number’s will never be calculated but it is suspected that MILLION’s of wild animal’s lost their lives. In fire. Burnt to death.
The stories we hear are just awful. Nothing can describe what these people have been through. One man watched as his children burnt to death in the family car. Another watched the same thing happen to his father. Husbands and wives separated by flames and never made it. People lost their entire families in one foul swoop. People have LOST EVERYTHING.
Perhaps it’s just hard to image what that would be like? Being burnt to death? Being trapped in a literal inferno? Perhaps the news feeds for our fire’s have shown the fire, but not the lives it took. Perhaps you saw the flames but not the tears and heart ache that is being felt all over our country.
The fires are still burning. The fire fighter’s are still fighting. While all hope was lost in one day for hundred’s of lives, and EVERYONE in Australia is feeling the hurt and the loss and the devastation that the fire’s have created this one photo shows up and gives us hope.
It makes us see that there were true hero’s fighting for the live’s and the life styles of people that we know and love. It makes us see that in the face of devistation, a wild animal who had been burnt but had managed to survive the flames, would be willing to trust a MAN to give it comfort.
Koala’s are not pet’s. Touching a Koala in the wild would be much like trying to pet a wild grizzly bear or befriend a poisonous snake in the wild. This just doesn’t happen. In fact, unless you’re looking for them and happen to be really lucky, you’re highly unlikely to SEE a Koala in the wild. And for anyone that doesn’t know? Under normal circumstances, this Koala would have ripped this man to pieces if he’d tried to get that close in the wild.
In the comments on that website, quite a few people said that Australian’s have a weird obsession with animals. No. We do not. But we respect what this photo signifies. And we did not make fun of people jumping out of the Twin Tower’s, or the people being rescued from roof tops when Hurricane Katrina hit. We pulled together, and we raised money to help.
We are a relatively small country. But we have big hearts. And everyone has been affected by these fires. Everyone know’s someone who has been touched by the flames. And for a heartless bunch of idiot’s to make fun of the very little hope that we managed to find when the smoke started to clear, was just wrong. The apology issued, was worse.
It makes me lose faith in the human race. That just because ocean’s are between us, they couldn’t see the hope that we found in that photo. They couldn’t feel our pain. That saying a Koala who has been burnt in the flames being given water by a man who may well have been awake for more than 24 hours to save lives is, being pampered? How do these people live with themselves?
Perhaps, this is how this photo should be remembered.
