Australians who’ve sworn off flying: ‘If you get on a plane, you’ve undone a year’s worth of good’

Wendy Catling and her husband Peter Miller say their retirement will look different without flying, but it’s an issue they feel very strongly about. Photograph: Ellen Smith/The Guardian

After the bushfires of 2019, 38-year-old Clara* made a drastic decision: she swore off all air travel.

“I had a two-year-old who was coughing up blood from all the smoke in the air in Canberra,” she recalls. “My morning routine was opening up the air quality app to see whether we could go outside that day.”