Onderweg naar Sydney. Foto | privé-archief Marly

Forest fires not giving TU/e students in Oz much trouble

At most they are having to reroute their road trips and have seen columns of smoke, no more than that. The nuisance caused to most TU/e students in Australia seems to be limited. To date the university has received no alarming reports from Australia-goers.

by
photo Privé-archief Marly Wouters

Marly Wouters and Job Nijhuis, master's students of Chemical Engineering, travelled to Adelaide in August to carry out their thesis research. Now and then the smoke has been an issue for them but other than that they have been little troubled by the fires. “During the Christmas vacation I drove to Melbourne and there was one day there that the city air was very blue with smoke. And in Adelaide too, we had one very smoky day. Job joined others in the Christmas vacation to take a road trip to Sydney. During the drive they saw a lot of smoke and they kept leaving places a day or two before they were evacuated. Although most of the fires are not within South Australia, the Adelaide Hills and Kangaroo Island have also been badly hit by fire. We wanted to visit the island but now it's too late; it's been largely destroyed by fire,” says Wouters.

 

The two students have had several mails from their university in Adelaide about the fires. “They are mostly about helping people who have been affected by the fires. The university has made a special website,” says Wouters. She and Nijhuis are aware that the Australians are really concerned about the fires. “It's having a fairly big impact on people here. There are a lot of fundraisers for the forest fires and some demonstrations too."

Wouters and Nijhuis are sticking to their plans and will be staying in Adelaide until early April. "We are close to the city center so we are far enough from the forest fires.”

'No risk of fire in the city'

Thijs Muilwijk, a student of Biomedical Engineering, has been living in Coogee - an eastern suburb of Sydney - since August and is doing his internship in the city. “Speaking personally, the forest fires haven't caused me any trouble; there's no risk of fire in the city. On some days though there's a considerable amount of smoke in the city. It limits how far you can see, and now and again the way your throat feels at the end of the day makes you realize how much smoke was in the city that day. It probably isn't very healthy to breathe it in, but I'm not experiencing any immediate ill effects.”

When the forest fires had just begun, Muilwijk received an email informing students that they ‘must watch out for fires in the national parks near Sydney’. “For the rest, the university has released little information.”

According to Muilwijk, students should not be deterred from visiting Australia. “Okay, so the smoke is perhaps bothersome now and then but this shouldn't be any reason not to go to Australia if that's what you really want to do. In the cities life is going on as usual. This year the fires are really extreme, but it may be that next year there isn't a problem. The main thing is that it is really sad that so many people and millions of animals have died in the forest fires and that so much of the country's fabulous nature has been devastated.”

'Particles of ash falling like snow'

Luuk Tooten, a master's student of Mechanical Engineering, did an internship at the University of Adelaide from early September through to mid-November and afterwards he went travelling. “While I was doing my internship in Adelaide the forest fires didn't cause me any trouble at all. The biggest forest fires started in November and were mainly in the states of New South Wales and Queensland, a very long way from Adelaide.”

Tooten first noticed signs of the forest fires in mid-December when he was on his way from Melbourne to Sydney. “We were travelling along the coast and you could see that visibility was gradually getting worse. We spent a night in Merimbula - which has now been given the travel advice ‘essential travel only’ by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs - and we looked up online where all the current forest fires were. We decided to travel the rest of the way inland, to get to Sydney via Canberra, because along the coast the forest fires were getting really close to the major roads. On that section heading towards Sydney, visibility was worsening all the time due to the increasing smoke. In Sydney it varied from day to day, one day it would be clear and the next there'd be smoke hanging over the city. One day at the end of December it was 45 degrees and it was so bad that now and again particles of ash were falling like snow.”

Tooten's message for students planning to go to Australia is not to let themselves be put off by the news. “Only the worst and most emotional things are reported in the news. And of course what's happening is really bad but I never felt unsafe for a minute. If you keep an eye on where the forest fires are, don't do anything stupid and stay in the major cities, nothing can happen.” And, he also wants to say: “There are lots of ways you can donate!”

Code orange

Petri van de Vorst, a member of staff at TU/e's International Office, tells Cursor that she has not received any alarming reports from students in Australia. “The area that has been given a 'code orange' lies between Melbourne (no warning) and Sydney (code yellow, safety risks). Most students from TU/e usually go to Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane (code green); not many go to Canberra. It is now the summer vacation in Australia, so hardly any students are in Australia on an exchange program because the semester has finished - but some are still there doing an internship and/or taking a vacation.”

Van de Vorst tells us that in the past calendar year thirty-eight TU/e students went to Australia and that - as far as the International Office knows - in the third quartile nine students will go there. “None of these nine students plans to go to Canberra. Nor have I spoken to any students or learned from colleagues that any students have changed their plans.” TU/e has lately received news from the University of Sydney that lectures will go on as usual after the summer break.

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