In the summer of 2019–20 I worked in the customer service department of an Australian zoo. I was used to cycling to work, gliding past traffic and cutting through parklands in my khaki uniform. But I found myself driving much more than usual. Cycling resulted in weariness and respiratory irritation, as I breathed in toxic particulate matter. Bushfire smoke smothered the city, forcing us indoors. With the smoke settling for days at a time, I relied more on my exhaust-spewing vehicle to get to work. The dark irony was hard to miss.

A third of the zoo’s customer service staff work outdoors at any given time, so we were given access to P2 masks. I was often rostered at the gates, where I observed mostly mask-less visitors wading through the smoke haze. Witnessing these slow arrivals, my mind turned to the creatures they were coming to see. I thought of the giraffes, baboons and snow leopards breathing in smoke whenever they entered the public areas of their enclosures. I thought of the orange-bellied parrots, macaws and cassowaries, of the endangered Tasmanian devils and the critically endangered helmeted honeyeaters. I thought of the symbolism of a zoo in an apocalyptic scene: as sanctuary, as last hope for species survival, as proof of the scale of settler Australia’s environmental degradation.