Australian one-day fast bowler Nathan Bracken has said that the experience of watching common Australians battling the bush fires in the southern part of the country will stay with him forever.
“As a professional cricketer your career is defined by what you do on the field: the hundreds you score, the wickets you claim or the great catches you take. But it is often the things we experience away from the game that bring emotion and meaning to our lives,” Bracken writes in article for the Sydney Morning Herald.
Recalling the Australian cricket team's visit to Whittlesea - one of the many bushfire-ravaged towns in Victoria, Bracken says that it was only a brief glimpse of the destruction the fires have inflicted on so many lives.
“Yet, I am sure my teammates will agree when I say the experience was something we'll carry with us for the rest of our lives. To stand among the ashes and talk to those people who have been directly affected by the fires … to listen to the tales of absolute courage … to hear about the fight they showed to survive and to protect their homes, their families, their friends and even people who they didn't know … was tragically inspiring. Heroes, all of them,” says Bracken.
To try and comprehend the feelings and the emotions everyone in that area experienced is impossible. To picture the ferocity of the fire; flames that were three to four storeys high and raced through the bush at 90 destructive kilometres an hour was equally terrifying. Listening to how the people of Whittlesea and beyond came through it - by sticking together - highlighted the power and greatness of the human spirit,” he adds.
“Nothing I write will give the big picture of this national disaster. It cannot capture the suffering of the families involved or the tireless efforts of trained counsellors who are offering the victims support, or the valour of the Country Fire Authority volunteers who are still out there risking their lives to help people who often they've never met,” he says.
He hoped the Australian cricket team’s visit made some difference to the lives of the affected people, and added that the visit has changed his life for the better.
