In October 2023, the Bass Strait and Otway Basin will become the next frontier for offshore oil and gas exploration. Spanning from the coast of Warrnambool to Currie, the licenses cover over 7.7 million hectares of ocean. The irony is strong: the oilfields are named after the Thylacine, the famously extinct Tasmanian tiger, and Yolla, the Palawa kani word for short-tailed shearwaters—birds which have of late been washing up on the beaches of King Island with plastic in their guts.

When iso’s over I’m buying a coleslaw handfuls of nectarines, vanilla pudding to keep the lockdown woes at bay, I’m kinda worried not rly because I’ve got the spicy cough you know, I’m young – no underlying conditions but my brother has spent the past week in emergency

Jess tossed and turned in her bed. Far away, she imagined thick sleeves of bull kelp sucking against limestone cliffs. The sea was restless, spreading itself over the crumbling city grid where vehicles dunked and flipped. Houses turned to flotsam as the Earth blinked, the eye of the storm turned away from the sun. There was no Moon—everything was churning liquid, rubbery darkness. She had sunk to the ocean floor, head firmly anchored to the pillow.

As my plane soars over the Northern Territory, I imagine the ocean has turned into desert, its skin inscribed with song cycles. Ribbed earth stretches into ochre dunes like the bottom of the sea, the hills puckering with naked-looking, coppery scars. Darker blooms jut fractally into the dry, tessellating scales and the sandy plains are dotted with poppyseed vegetation.

We are at a crossroads where gas could be locked into the energy grid for the coming decades. We could combine investment in renewable energy to decarbonise manufacturing jobs, and regulate the industry to ensure that more gas stays in Australia. But the choice is likely to be obfuscated as a single pathway: one more silver bullet, one more rush for gas.

For insecure workers, ‘going back to normal’ is not possible or desired. What the pandemic has shown us is that in order to sustain the rural workforce, we need to improve the material and structural conditions that put precarious workers at risk.