By former Sunday Herald picture editor Neil Bennett, who has lived and worked in Australia for 12 years. As head of photography at AAP, the national wire service, he has had to cover the story of bushfires destroying large parts of the country he now calls home

‘PLEASE be safe. No picture is worth risking your life for.” These are the words I use when deploying photographers to bushfire areas, reminding them to stay hydrated and encouraging them not to take risks.

Many of the photographers at Australian Associated Press (AAP) – the national news wire service in Australia – have covered bushfires for decades, although the fires they have been shooting for the past a couple of months are of a different scale.

Australia is on fire! This sounds like a sensational tabloid headline or an exaggerated pub anecdote about the sporting prowess of the cricket team. Unfortunately it is only too true and the fires across this huge country have impacted every state in the last eight weeks.

Extreme heat and high destructive winds have created deadly conditions. There have been two years of severe drought in rural areas.

Some towns have not seen rain for over 18 months, and a number of places are in their last weeks of water supply.

The bushfires are also affecting the capital cities. Sydney, where I live, has been choking with a smoke haze for months. The smoke from the fires has blanketed this large densely populated city, causing face masks to sell out and people who suffer from asthma or respiratory problems regularly warned to stay indoors.

READ MORE: Pat Kane: We must keep talking about Australia's wildfires

In Canberra, where air quality is currently worse than Delhi, an elderly woman was taken ill getting off a plane with breathing issues and later died.

Everyone here is exhausted physically and mentally. The photographers and journalists are committed to covering these relentless fires and telling the stories of the communities affected by this unimaginable natural disaster.

When you look at the images in your newspaper, on your phone, or on television, the photographers, camera operators and journalists working are easy to take for granted, but the dedicated, professional staff are undoubtedly the bravest I have ever worked with.

When I texted a photographer to check he was OK, I got a messages back saying “yes it was intense, but all good, I need new boots though, the soles have melted”.

AAP has an indefatigable team who are risking their lives to stand directly behind Australia’s hero volunteer firefighters battling the unceasingly intense flames as the winds push the heat across these desperate towns and villages.

The last couple of days have seen thousands of people fleeing the coastal regions where fires are expected to flare up again as temperatures reach 45+ degrees and the hairdryer winds pick up.

Families who have been on their annual summer holiday break over Christmas and New Year have been in grave danger for days as the weather systems fluctuate from hot to Catastrophic (official term for fire extremity).

THIS is a tragic story of human suffering but it is also contentiously political. The government is thought to be culpable. Politicians’ lack of interest and support for renewable energy, plus the political divide over a carbon tax and emissions targets are being highlighted as reasons they fail to take serious action to combat climate change.

The under-pressure prime minister cut short a much criticised “secret” holiday to Hawaii before Christmas. Commentators were attacking his team for lying, and him for not being in the country while the fires were destroying communities.

David Crowe, the Sydney Morning Herald political editor wrote: “When The New Daily’s Samantha Maiden asked the prime minister’s office on Monday if Morrison was in Hawaii, she was told this was ‘wrong’.

READ MORE: ‘Catastrophic’ wildfires ravage Australia during record heatwave

‘‘When BBC journalist Frances Mao asked on Wednesday, she was told it was ‘incorrect’ to say he was in Hawaii.

‘‘There is no excuse for those lies. Against his own interest, Morrison is cementing the impression he is not straight with the facts."

This week the footage of Morrison on a visit to a fire-affected community, grabbing a young women’s hand and forcing her to shake his, alongside vision of a worn-out firefighter pulling his hand away as the prime minister tried to shake it, symbolised Morrison’s poor choices and will live long in the memory for many.

Barrie Cassidy, the former press secretary to the late prime minister Bob Hawke in the 1980s and a recently retired ABC television political heavyweight, tweeted: ‘‘You are watching the destruction of a political leader and this time not by his own party but by his own hand.’’

There are also signs of Australian irreverent humour. Someone last week posted an image on my Facebook page of a note in a bookshop window. The post-apocalyptic fiction section has been moved to current affairs. This ironic message is in the the town of Cobargo, where Morrison tried to shake hands, and one of the many communities ravaged by bushfires. A comment under the picture says: “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”

Understandably there have been many tears in the past few months. On November 10, before the secret holiday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison was seen comforting 85-year-old Owen Whalan, who whilst talking burst into uncontrollable tears, having been evacuated from his home fearing the worst.

Also this week there were emotional scenes in Western Sydney at a funeral for Geoffrey Keaton, a firefighter who had perished while on duty. NSW Fire Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons was photographed pinning a posthumous medal to the chest of Keaton’s 19-month-old son Harvey.

The National:

Looking down at the medal, little Harvey – dressed in a children’s fire uniform and still sucking his dummy – received the honour for his late father, one of many heroes.

On Saturday as 1000 evacuees were transferred on a Royal Navy ship along the coast from Mallacoota in Gippsland, to Morningside near Melbourne, people were in tears as they stepped on to safe ground and were comforted by loved ones.

The ship will return to Mallacoota where 3000 other stranded people, who have been there since New Year’s Eve, will be rescued.

Every year there is a bushfire season, as Australians call it, an annual event which they stoically prepare for.

You’re encouraged to have a fire plan, consisting of hosing down the house and dampening the surrounding area, clearing gutters of dry leaves, and moving other natural fuels the fires seek to burn. This year the temperatures and conditions are different; they are vast and ferocious.

ON New Year’s Day in Southern New South Wales one of our freelance photographers came across a desperate dairy farmer. Steve Shipton was inspecting his livestock who were helplessly lying in the brown, burnt field.

He had brought his shot gun to stop the burning, dying cattle suffering anymore, even though he was killing both his business and livelihood.

Other desperate famers comforted him after he finished, emotionally sharing the burden of this grief.

The National:

The photographer Sean Davey contacted me that night saying he wanted to do all he could to help the farmer. He‘d set up a GoFundMe page and asked could I share it with everyone. The donations quickly rose the next morning to more than $3000, today I checked the amount and it has hit $25,000.

One of the donations was from Susie Johnston in Scotland who donated $500 and left the message, ‘‘I am praying for rain for Australia. I am so sorry for what you are enduring. It will come. Just not soon enough this time. Wishes of peace and rain from Scotland.’’

In my job I have to stay across the 24-hour news cycle and the most profound and chilling words I hear are contained in the simple advice from fire chiefs and politicians: ‘‘Do not stay and defend, get out now!’’

The latest reports are saying Penrith – not the Cumbrian town, but the Western part of Sydney – is 48.9 degrees today, breaking all temperature records for Sydney. It is being called the hottest place on earth.

It is difficult to imagine what the next 10 years will look like here, but the community spirit, Australian mateship and instinct to help each other will be at the heart of it.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-steve-shipton-from-coolagolite