Cyclones, droughts and forest fires have been a consistent part of the Australian environment for centuries, but the escalation in climate change is making such events more regular and their severity increasingly pronounced. This was most recently seen in the bushfires that raged across large swathes of eastern and southern Australia from September 2019 to January 2020, which claimed the lives of dozens of people and an estimated half a billion animals. Some people lost homes and livelihoods, while whole communities were consumed by the flames that raged across 11 million hectares of Australian land.
The human, animal and environmental toll has been well documented, however, the long-term impact of the bushfires on the mental wellbeing of children and young people is yet to be fully understood and could last for years, experts say.
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