Bundarrah Days

RENOWNED American Fire expert, Stephen. J. Pyne is headed for Australia to provide expert advice and testimony to the Teague Royal Commission.

Professor Pyne of the School of Life Sciences at the University of Arizona has written two excellent books on fire in Australia - Burning Bush: A Fire History of Australia and The Still Burning Bush.

Bundarrah Days is very encouraged by the request to Professor Pyne to appear before The Commission because it suggests that it is going to be a very thorough inquiry.

Professor Pyne believes that the very basic error that land mangers have made in dealing with fire are persistent attempts to either eliminate it or suppress it instead of learning to live with it.

A couple of weeks ago, in the initial aftermath of Black Saturday, he wrote this:

"It seems likely that Black Saturday II will yield another royal commission. Much has changed over 70 years; Australians are more urban, more sensitive to environmental issues, keener to protect unique ecological assets. Yet perhaps they are substituting another, more modern delusion, striving to remake the burning bush into an unburnt Oz, only to find this vision also repeatedly obliterated by remorseless fire."

Indeed, some Australians are striving after this delusion and others have delusions of their own. The greens want more wildfire along the lines of Black Saturday because they believe it is a part of the natural cycle.

That is their delusion and it bears no resemblance to the natural cycle that existed before European settlement and prevailed for many thousands of years. What would Victorian forests like look now if we'd had the fire events of the past six years repeated time and again in a cycle over 40,000 odd years?

These holocaust fires are not natural. Just as the Australian environment has changed since settlement so has the nature of fire changed. A fire that is burning vast amounts of ground fuel built up over decades is not the same as a fire lit by indigenous people to promote the growth of grass for their game animals, for example.

Which fire would you prefer to live with? Professor Pyne invites us to make a choice because whatever happens we will always have fire with us.

I know which one I choose.