Melanie Scaife shares her ‘head-cracking moment’ - when climate change hit home and she found herself a mother facing the mother of all threats.

Kyla’s notes:

I identify with Melanie’s story. It’s not just that we are of a similar demographic living in the same rural shire, both with four-year-old daughters who are obsessed by rainbow unicorns - like Melanie, I too found myself switched on to climate change in the space of a moment that felt like forever. But I couldn’t find the words until I sat down with Melanie, an audio recorder and a cup of strong coffee…

Rob and I have talked a lot about how to weave in and explore through End Game the more personal side of how we grapple with climate change - and the ‘big bang’ seemed like a good place to start.

In this piece Melanie reads excerpts of a speech she gave at the Mount Alexander Shire Climate Change Forum held in December 2019; urging our local council to declare a climate emergency. Rob and I also spoke at the Forum, alongside 140 odd residents, business owners and community group leaders from our town and its surrounds.

I remember sitting in the audience and thinking - so these are the people I’ll be sharing food, water and a leaky boat with as the impacts of climate change intensify. My interest was sparked in what they had to say and how they saw the world and our future.

Later I discovered that the forum was a key moment in the story of our shire’s response to climate change - and it really did precipitate the emergency declaration that happened shortly after. [For more listen to End Game’s ‘Problem Solved’]. The forum was also an expression of a collective community voice on climate change and part of a long and rich history of climate action in our town [for more listen to End Game’s ‘Bubbling away and rising’]

But ‘Everything you hold dear’ is not about the Climate Change Forum and our community response to the crisis - it is about a woman coming to grips with climate change emotionally - and then managing that realisation once it’s out of the box. (read more on Kyla’s blog about the story behind ‘Everything you hold dear’)

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Credits
co-Produced by Kyla Brettle & Rob Law
Sound Design by Kyla Brettle
Music by Rob Law
Photography by Carmen Bunting

Featuring
Melanie Scaife
Frankie Macfarlane

License
CC BY-NC-SA (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike)

Distribution
Feb 3, 2021 “End Game | Everything you hold dear” on Climactic with Mark Spencer on The Climactic Collective

Jan 26, 2021 “Hello EndGame” on HearSay with Suzanne Donisthorpe on MAINfm (includes Suzanne’s interview with Kyla)

If you would like to share this show with your audiences contact us to request a downloadable copy

Links
Melanie Scaife Readable Media
Carmen Bunting Photography
Rob Law’s music
Kyla Brettle’s newsletter