by maddog » Tue 15 Jan, 2013 3:36 pm
Given the inappropriate fire regime currently witnessed around the country, the following from Gammage (Ch 6) seems relevant to the discussion;
People could not have survived such fires [ACT fires, 2003] in 1788. Had they faced the Black Saturdays and Ash Wednesdays white Australia has suffered, most must have died. Any uncontrolled fire menaced: a day's fire might eat a year's food. Latz observed of central Australia,
'After several very good seasons the amount of flammable material can build up to such an extent that a single wildfire, initiated in the height of summer can sweep over huge areas of the desert destroying everything in its path. When good rains do not follow these fires, the effect on the flora and fauna (and even the soils) can be devastating. If this situation has arisen in the past it is hard to imagine how Aboriginal people could have survived'
This situation rarely arose. People had to prevent it or die. They worked hard too make fire malleable, and to confine killer fires to legends and cautionary tales. But a great challenge was a great opportunity. Fire could kill, but fire or no fire could distribute plant communities with the precision of a flame edge. Fire could be an ally.
Gammage goes on to describe, amongst other things, Aboriginal burning (including in the summer months), and fires that though fierce were not so hot that a man could not walk behind them. For example;
in 1814 Evans wrote that the Blue Mountains 'have been fired; had we been on them we could not have escaped; the flames rage with violence through the thick underwood, which they are covered with'. He recorded more fires the next day, but walked close behind the flames. He could not have done so behind any of Australia's recent big fires. West of the Bogan Mitchell saw 'that much pains had been taken by the natives to spread the fire, from its burning in separate places. Huge trees fell now and then with a crashing sound, loud as thunder, while others hung just ready to fall...We travelled five miles through this fire and smoke. The fire was hot enough to burn trees, but not to link 'separate places', or prevent riding amongst them.
...
These were summer fires, yet Europeans could travel near them, and most were out in a day. A Pitjantjatjara elder explained, 'before the arrival of white people Anungu did not know about really large bush fires, but now they do...the country had been properly looked after and it was not possible for such things as large scale bushfires to occur. A Darling and Paroo pioneer noted:
another remarkable characteristic of the aborigine...the care taken by them to prevent bush fires. In my long experience I have never known any serious bushfire caused by the blacks, and the condition of the country, the growth of the trees and bushes, such as she oaks, pines, and acacias and a score of other kinds of trees that bush fires always destroy were, when the white man arrived, flourishing in the perfection of beauty and health...Australia in its natural state undoubtedly was liable to the ravages of extensive bushfire, and with so many hostile tribes it seems as if they would be a frequent occurrence, yet they evidently were not
In addition to the extinction of many species caused by changed fire regimes as documented by Flannery, is the dogma of Wilderness and 'conservation by neglect', with the implicit denial of beneficial anthropological influence on the Australian landscape - also responsible for today's destructive infernos?
So can I conclude that wilderness is in the eye of the beholder.
