Musing on catastrophe as a giant swathe of Australia today sweltered through a heatwave that induced catastrophic conditions. After our last fatal firestorm the top tier was upped, in order to avoid a repeat of that heartbreaking natural disaster.

And so in the shadow of the eclipse, strapped into the rollercoaster for weeks to come, we can continue to expect the kind of unsettling events that shoot our dial far right.

It strikes me that we employ our tendency to catastrophise at the first sign of big trouble. O r conversely we remain so complacent as to be disturbingly unaffected. There seems to be little middle ground in the land of extremes. Perhaps worse of all, we can swing wildly between the two, dangerously calm AND rattled.

Catastrophe is by definition an unexpected downturn in events, an utter fiasco that is suddenly sprung upon us. It is from here that we are forced to respond. Perhaps that is the toughest aspect of it all - our utter inability to know what comes next and a feeling of helplessness in the moment.

And yet the advice in any disaster event is crystal clear and disarmingly simple.

Prepare : it's not as though we didn't know the eclipse was looming or what flavour it would be. Forewarned is forearmed. And yes, we're not even halfway through this mad season.

Act : hands up anyone who sailed serenely through, unscathed and unchanged. Let us all know how you pulled that off.

Survive : every single day, experience, eclipse in a row. We're all still here.

As always, the answers we seek are right in front of us if we simply read the signs.

Words c. Kerrie Basha 2017