Five years ago this was what Australia looked like from above. In the grip of catastrophic firestorms that had been raging for months and cost us all dearly. We could not see the sky. It was hard to breathe everywhere. Our PM took off anyway for his Summer holidays in Hawaii and famously told the journos who tracked him to a luxury hotel, mate I don't hold a hose. Or give a shit, as it turned out. A new norm was revealed, as dangerous as any inferno.

The equinox tipping point beckons but nature never goes early. Her time is ever ours to keep. For more than a day yet we are plunged and resurface gasping through the fathomless whirlpool of Pisces. Its inherent dissolution loosening the bonds to what has already passed. Its inexorable draw torrenting over the falls at the far end of the zodiac.

This is a flux capacitor, invented by fictional Dr Emmet Brown in 1955 to enable time travel in his DeLorean. It stored the power held in a lightning bolt which when unleashed neatly zapped you into another dimension of time and space.

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.