Massive Mildura dust storm leaves Victorian town 'unliveable' amid 40C heat

As Victoria issued a code red bushfire alert and Melbourne sweltered through a record-equalling November temperature, the residents of Mildura walked out of their homes at midday on Thursday to see a dust storm rolling in.

On a day of catastrophic fire danger and 40C heat, high winds swept the dry topsoil into the air and across the state. In Mildura, in far north-western Victoria, dramatic footage and pictures showed the sky turn an angry red.

Residents told Guardian Australia it was like a “wall of dust”, a danger to asthmatics, and “unliveable”. And, for many, it is not even the worst dust storm this year. In May residents reported a storm as the town’s worst in 40 years.

Josh Maloney, a 17-year old student at Mildura Senior College, said he had seen Thursday’s dust storm come in during class.

“I’m standing in the middle of dust storm right now,” he told Guardian Australia. “We noticed through the windows that the sky had turned this dark, thick orange. We could feel this thick dust on the tables.

“This is bad but recently there have been probably been three or four a week.”

Sophie Appleby, 35, was working from home with her one-year-old child, with the windows closed and the doors shut.

“What is really eerie is that everything goes quiet,” she said. “There’s no birdsong, there’s nothing. It’s really bizarre and you know you are in the worst of it when the birds stop singing.

“I have been here for 10 years and have never experienced anything like this. We used to have a dust storm a year, this is now a weekly basis. At its worst I couldn’t see across the road. This time the heat, because it is 40C, coupled with the dust just made it unliveable. You couldn’t go outside.

“It is really concerning to have young children and to feel like you can’t leave your house. You’re kind of trapped.”

Appleby said the extended drought had devastated farming communities and made the dust storms more frequent.

“We haven’t seen rain in months. It is absolutely climate-induced. The drought in this region is crippling farmers. And the dust in the sky is that farmers’ topsoil. When you put it into perspective like that it is terrifying.”

Maloney, who took part in the school climate strike, agreed. “Within the last 12 months dust storms have been a lot more regular,” he said.

“We’ve had two or three really bad ones. This is probably the second worst one this year … it’s a lot to do with mismanagement, this partially man-made drought.

“If anyone wants to call this completely natural circumstances, I think they would be kidding themselves, and a lot of this is due to mismanagement of our own resources.”

A fellow resident, Narelle Hahn-Smith, said greed and the diversion of irrigation water had made conditions worse.

“I’ve lived in Mildura for 52 years,” she said. “We do get dust storms if we’ve had a dry winter but because we’ve had two seasons of failed crops our farming district is struggling.

“If you’ve got zero allocation of water there is less water going on to crops, which causes less evaporation, which causes less rain. It is an ongoing cycle. My feeling is that part of our drought is man-made through greed. The Darling River has been seriously interfered with higher up.

“I’m an asthmatic so I’ve had to stay inside today. We’ve had a couple of dust storms a week for several weeks now and we haven’t even hit summer. I can’t imagine how bad it will over summer.”

Sara White captured the moment the dust rolled in. “You could almost see to the end of the street, then within a matter of 20 seconds you could only see 50 metres down the road,” she said.

“It was like an orange hue, not dissimilar to when you have bushfire smoke everywhere. The sun was trying to come through but it can’t, and you just get an orange glow. You get grit in your eyes, in your mouth.

“It’s something that we are getting quite used to over here and it’s not something I would prefer we get used to.”

“The dust storms are becoming incredibly frequent. I actually asked my next -oor neighbour, he is 84 years old and has lived in Mildura most of his life. I asked if he had seen it like this before. He said he hasn’t seen anything like this since 1944-45.”

Appleby, who also has a six-year-old in school, said it was scary to think that this would be the future for her children.

“We are seeing the effects of climate change firsthand in this region and these increasing dust storms are just one part of that,” she said. “It’s terrifying to think of the future. Is this the new normal for my children that I can’t take them outside to play, that we can’t leave the house? That’s scary.”