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Aborigines as gardener's managing bushfires

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Aborigines as gardener's managing bushfires

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Strong winds and soaring temperatures have led to dozens of bushfires in southern Australia. Could Aboriginal "gardening" techniques be used to control them in future?

I am only an hour into visiting a retired couple just north of Sydney when I realise Bill Plant has left the room and not come back.

"Must have smelt smoke," his wife Julie suggests.

Bill's compunction is a lifetime in the making, an olfactory fire alarm he shares with many of his fellow compatriots.

"If you find fire, you phone neighbours, get buckets and go help," Bill explains upon his return.

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Largely ascribed to global warming, average temperatures are increasing in Australia.

The land dries crisp and tinderbox very quickly. One careless cigarette butt, bolt of lightning, or piece of broken glass can instigate voluminous bushfires which race and rage across the land, incinerating everything in their path.

The most prolific tree in the Australian bush is the iconic eucalyptus, nicknamed the "gum tree" and described to me by one fireman as "a living firebomb".

The bark of the tree falls away in thin flammable sheets - a touch paper to any passing spark - whilst the air in and around a eucalyptus forest hangs with the oil for which the tree is renowned. It creates an incendiary haze which sometimes causes the air to burn by itself.

The Blue Mountains are a vast carpet of heritage listed forest in the state of New South Wales, so named because, from a distance, this cloud of oil gives the mountains a slate blue hue.

At the end of last year, ferocious fires here burnt 200 homes to the ground. On my way to view the damage three months on, the car radio warns of another fire alert in the neighbouring state of Victoria with the ominous words: "It is now too late to leave the area. Ready yourself."

When I arrive at Yellow Rock, the scorched valleys are a surreal sight. Heavily blackened trunks stand stubborn in the burnt dust. But sprouting from their spiky tops are iridescent explosions of green shoots.

"Everything about the eucalyptus tree is designed to catch fire, spread fire and then grow back once its competitors have been destroyed in that fire," observes Bill Gammage.

I am crouched on a heat-cracked rock overlooking a valley of burnt bush as I talk to Bill, a semi-retired history professor from the Australian National University.

"What people have forgotten is that a lot of these trees were not here when the Europeans first arrived," he asserts.

As a historian, Bill examined thousands of old eyewitness testimonies, paintings and drawings and found that, before the Europeans arrived, places like the Blue Mountains once contained significant amounts of grass pasture. His book on the subject won the Prime Minister's Literary Award.

Having lived and evolved on the continent for millennia, Aborigines managed the land almost like a garden - effectively using expertly controlled fires to keep the flora in check.

The resulting grasslands not only attracted animals which the Aborigines could hunt, they also provided massive firebreaks preventing the kind of destructive fires Australia is increasingly suffering.

When the Europeans arrived they kicked the gardeners out of the garden. And the garden went wild.

The common notion, fought for by the powerful green lobby, is that eucalyptus forest is the natural state of Australia and that every tree must be protected. Hence you have to apply for a licence to chop down even one tree growing near your house.

"It is too late to reverse the clock back to 1788," says Prof Gammage. "But the kind of damage we are looking at today could be lessened if we employed Aborigines to do something they spent tens of thousands of years perfecting."

Jack Saunders, a 17-year-old New South Wales firefighter, is keen to show me his copy of the official Bushfire Fighting Manual. The chapter on fire prevention acknowledges that controlled burning may be used "to maintain the natural condition of the environment and imitate the use of fire by its traditional owners over tens of thousands of years".

But there is an odd tension here, which rather unusually pitches conservation groups against an ancient knowledge. What exactly is the "natural" environment of Australia?

Is it the massive forests which have proliferated since 1788? Or is it the Australia gardened by the Aborigines for the tens of thousands of years prior to that?

In the burnt Blue Mountains bush I reach down to pick up the charred husk of a seed pod. It comes from the banksia shrub, the seeds of which are only released by the heat of flames.

Another timely reminder of how, along with the gum tree and the human being, Australia has evolved with, and been forged by, fire.

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How Aborigines solved the bushfire problem

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Strong winds and soaring temperatures have led to dozens of bushfires in southern Australia. Could Aboriginal "gardening" techniques be used to control them in future? I am only an hour into visiting a retired couple just north of Sydney when I realise Bill Plant has left the room and not come back.

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"You could just see houses exploding, it was absolutely incredible," a resident, Mark Schrimpton, told ABC after five houses on his street were destroyed.

"It was just horrendous. You could see more smoke that flames at one stage."

Authorities said they had learnt the lessons from Black Saturday, when many residents in fire zones were caught with little warning and were confused as to whether to evacuate or stay and protect their homes.

"There is no doubt Victoria is much better place - and yesterday showed that - than where we were five years ago in Black Saturday," said Dennis Napthine, Victoria's premier. "We have learnt the lessons."

Firefighters from interstate and from New Zealand joined the battle, as authorities deployed more than 200 tankers and 21 aircraft. Police are investigating nine cases of arson, which may have contributed to the 150-odd fires that have broken out in recent days.

Milder conditions have assisted fire crews but about 48 blazes in Victoria remain out of control. A fire has broken out in an open-cut coal mine in the Latrobe Valley, east of Melbourne, which is likely to take several days to control.

"They were ferocious fires, they ran hard, they hit homes," Craig Lapsley, the state's fire services commissioner, told ABC radio.

"We think we are up to above 20 significant impacts on houses, seven of those are confirmed to be total losses."

Other reports put the loss of houses at 30.

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Bush fires destroy dozens of houses in Australia's south east

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"You could just see houses exploding, it was absolutely incredible," a resident, Mark Schrimpton, told ABC after five houses on his street were destroyed. "It was just horrendous. You could see more smoke that flames at one stage."

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Feb 2014 video bbc update and causes of gusty winds and high temps explained

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Feb 2014 video bbc update and causes of gusty winds and high temps explained

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Dozens of bushfires are sweeping across southern Australia, fanned by hot weather and strong winds.

Officials say an unknown number of homes have been destroyed and a firefighter has been injured in the state of Victoria.

Some residents have been ordered to leave and flames have spread to the outer suburbs of Australia's second biggest city, Melbourne.

Conditions in Victoria are at their worst since 2009, authorities said.

Then, wildfires killed 173 people and destroyed about 2,000 homes in a disaster dubbed Black Saturday.

At the scene
Belle Nolan, Warrandyte, Victoria, Australia
I live in Warrandyte in Victoria State with my fiance, Ryan - one of the worst affected areas.

There's no co-ordinated evacuation, but we all have a bushfire emergency alert on our phones. We got an alert of a fast moving bushfire in the area, and were then told we had to evacuate.

There was smoke, ash and embers everywhere. The police were already closing the roads. We got out just in time before another alert telling us it was now too late to leave.

It's now 12 hours since we left and we're heading back. We have been told the fire is contained but not over, so we're not quite sure what we're going back to. We know that three houses have been destroyed and 25 acres of land destroyed.

We do get a lot of alerts and some people are very complacent and say they will stay no matter what.

But there is only one road out of town, so if there is a problem you do need to be on it.

Emergency crews are also fighting blazes in South Australia and New South Wales.

Cooler weather should help the massive firefighting effort, says the BBC's Phil Mercer in Sydney, although strong, gusty winds continue to fan the flames.

More than 70 fires are burning across Victoria and 15 emergency warnings are in effect, with up-to-date local information available on the Vic Emergency website.

Power station 'threat'

Hundreds of firefighters and dozens of fire engines are battling the blazes.

Fire authorities are worried about the threat posed to the coal-fired 1,600-megawatt Hazlewood Power Station in Latrobe Valley, local media reported.

Homes have been lost in the Melbourne suburbs of Warrandyte and Mickleham, and in Gisborne some 50km (30 miles) north-west of the city.

Victoria Premier Denis Napthine said help was available for anyone impacted by the wildfires.

"The Victorian government has an assistance package in place that will be rolled out immediately for those people who have lost their homes," Dr Napthine said.

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Dozens of bushfires are sweeping across southern Australia, fanned by hot weather and strong winds. Officials say an unknown number of homes have been destroyed and a firefighter has been injured in the state of Victoria. Some residents have been ordered to leave and flames have spread to the outer suburbs of Australia's second biggest city, Melbourne.

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Uncontrolled Bushfires Rage in Victoria and South Australia

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EXTREME WEATHER & CLIMATIC EVENTS . Hundreds of wildfires plague Victoria and South Australia, as thunderstorms threaten to spark more blazes Lightning-sparked bushfires are burning out of control in the state of Victoria and South Australia amid soaring temperatures caused by a persistent heatwave, as thunderstorms threaten to spark more fires.