Category: Bushfires

by Dr David Blackall
January 2020

Over four years, from 2013 to 2017, before retiring from teaching university-based journalism, I worked in the field with an ecologist and her Masters of Science students. We were using remote cameras and other data collection techniques, at my rain-forest wildlife refuge in Kangaroo Valley (NSW).

Though I had seen them thirty years ago, we found no apex predator, the native quoll (Eastern Quoll and the Tiger Quoll [extinct]). However – there were foxes, feral cats, European rats, and mice, galore. This was bad, as the apex predator (the native quoll) is crucial to forest management and indicative to ecological health. This data also showed that there were few native herbivores keeping the forest floor trimmed. My wildlife refuge is surrounded on three sides by a huge nature reserve, proclaimed in 1937, so in theory, it should be fairly clean of feral animals. Continue reading “Forests, Fuel, Fires and Fauna – Ignorance Increases Bushfire Risk”

By Rado Jacob Rebek – Geologist – 12 Jan 2020

According to an article in The Weekend Australian 11-12.1.2020, page 13, CSIRO bushfire expert David Packman, speaking on Sky News, said that fuel loads for fires are 10 times greater than before European settlement and that there is urgent need to reduce fuel loads on the bush floor through control burns (also called prescribed burning – or backburning when done in an emergency). Continue reading “Fuel Loads for Fires are 10 Times Greater than before European Settlement”

It has all happened before:

In the State of Victoria, the month of January of the year 1939 came towards the end of a long drought which had been aggravated by a severe hot, dry summer season.

For more than twenty years the State of Victoria had not seen its countryside and forests in such travail.

Continue reading “Royal Commission into the Bush Fires of January, 1939”

Green Folly locked up 11% of Australia in a tinder-box of bushfire fuel, much of which is now burnt or burning.

Green Folly closed forest tracks and gates, expelled foresters and timber-workers and prevented property owners from removing flammable fuel from their own land and adjacent roads, parks and forests. Those responsible for these follies should face Class Action. Continue reading “Fires Expose Green Folly”

The Bush Fire
Henry Lawson, 1905

Ah, better the thud of the deadly gun,
   and the crash of the bursting shell,
Than the terrible silence where drought is fought
   out there in the western hell;
And better the rattle of rifles near,
   or the thunder on deck at sea,
Than the sound — most hellish of all to hear —
   of a fire where it should not be. Continue reading “The Bush Fire – Henry Lawson, 1905”

by Viv Forbes, Executive Director, The Saltbush Club

There was a time when Australian foresters kept Australian forests safe and productive. They maintained access tracks bridges and fire breaks, undertook prescribed burning, cleared flammable litter from the forest floor, cut suckers, manned fire lookouts and maintained their own fire-fighting crews in decentralised districts. University-trained professional foresters were supported by tough experienced rangers who learned their job in the bush.

Almost every advance in bushfire management in Australia, from the science of fire behaviour to aerial burning was thanks to our foresters. Into the 1980’s they were regarded as international leaders.

To pay for good forest management, sections of the forest were logged, allowing ground space and sunlight for the swift re-growth of new trees. Continue reading “Put Foresters Back in the Forests”

Those who don’t know history…

On Black Friday 1939, on a day of high wind and savage 45 degree heat (110 Fahrenheit) many separate fires joined forces in Victoria to make mass conflagrations, one of which burned most of the western flanks of the Snowy Mountains all the way to New South Wales. In the end the conflagration burned through two million hectares, 3,700 buildings, 69 mills and killed 71 people. Five towns were completely destroyed –  never to be rebuilt. At the time, the atmospheric content of carbon dioxide was 310ppm and 90% of all human emissions were yet to be made. Climate Change has nothing to do with it.

Read more on Jo Nova’s blog: http://joannenova.com.au/2020/01/black-friday-1939-victoria-45-degrees-c-71-deaths-leaping-balls-of-fire-and-lit-by-the-hand-of-man/

The following is an excerpt from Jennifer Marohasy’s blog:

https://jennifermarohasy.com/2020/01/it-has-been-hotter-fires-have-burnt-larger-areas/

The historical evidence indicates fires have burnt very large areas before, and it has been hotter.

Some of the catastrophe has been compounded by our refusal to prepare appropriately. Expert Dr Christine Finlay explains the importance of properly managing the ever increasing fire loads in an article in The Australian. While there is an increase in the area of national park with Eucalyptus forests, there has been a reduction in the area of hazard reduction burning.

The situation is perhaps also made worse by fiddling with the historical temperature record. This will affect the capacity of those modelling bushfire behaviour to obtain an accurate forecast. Continue reading “Bushfires are Nothing New”

Listen to a man who has been fighting fires for 52 years. Brian Williams, the captain of the Kurrajong Heights brigade, called the 2GB Nights program on Tuesday 31st December, 2019: