Bundarrah Days

IT is believed that one in five people in my old town of Marysville are dead.

SATURDAY, February 7, 2009, will be remembered in Australian history as a day of the greatest infamy - a day that dwarfed the preceding bushfire tragedies of Black Thursday, 1851, Black Friday, 1939 and Ash Wednesday 1983.

The Victorian environment is no longer a game board for political greens and expediency minded politicians with votes on their minds.

It is a killing field where Victorians have been sacrificed on the altar of green environmentalism - a religion that was sold to them as a saviour and turned out to be an executioner.

For eight years I conducted horse tours in the bush around Marysville and I knew it better than most because I didn't stick to tracks - wherever possible I took people directly through the bush, interpreting it and educating them in its ways.

I knew very well that those forests were about to burn and what a terrible toll they would take when they did. So I tried, but obviously not well enough, to change things.

About six years ago I was a shortlived committee member of Marysville Tourism. I resigned because the group adopted an anti-logging stance and aligned itself with a radical green group which later organised a logging blockade in the area. At the time the group president was the manager of a well known guest house which now lies a burnt out ruin in the main street. At least one guest died there.

Around that time I also wrote an article for the local district newsheet, The Triangle, going into the background of the fire regime in Victoria's forests and how it had changed dangerously.

What little things I could do, I did. So did my friends - people like Bob Richardson of Push For The Bush, Graeme and Wendy Stoney, Charlie Lovick and Doug and Christa Treasure.

I put my cattle back on the high plains in defiance of Bracks and Thwaites. I told whoever would listen of the danger. I still have cattle in the Alpine National Park because I am not going to surrender to the negligent malfeasants who have cost us the lives of so many people.

What I and my friends did was not enough. We should have barnstormed Victorian towns and spread the message far and wide. We failed. I promise you we won't fail again.

First on my list is Bruce Esplin, Victoria's disaster commissioner whom I labelled on this blog as Victoria's Commissioner for Future Disasters. Could I have bestowed on him a more accurate title?

His head has to roll along with the decision making bureacrats in Parks Victoria and DSE. They should be charged with criminal negligence.

It's not as if no one knew of the rapidly growing and deadly peril. Anyone with experience of the Victorian bush was aware of the danger that was growing in our forests.

Scientists like David Packham, Athol Hodgson and Peter Attiwill did their utmost to help Victoria avoid last Saturday but the government wasn't listening.

In the final analysis this tragedy has not come without a lesson. Where are the massive fires one would expect to be burning right across the forests of the Victorian High Country right now. There was no lack of ignition factors, particularly on a day that reached 47C and featured heavy northerly winds.

That the vast majority of country that was burned in 2003 and 2006-07 is not burning now is not a matter of luck. It's because there is a reduced fuel load.

Australians have been lied to consistently by radical greens and their political friends. Now, it's no longer a matter of debate over forest management - it's a question of justice for all those who have died and every family who has lost a loved one.

Tomorrow Bundarrah Days will review warnings we have written over the years leading up to Saturday's disaster and invite readers of this blog to contribute to a submission to the coming Royal Commission.