This is one of my favourite songs. I found the clip with the fire fighters and I couldn’t think of a more appropriate way to begin this. It encapsulates the heroism, the heartache, danger and loss that fire fighting and bush fires can mean. Bushfire season is now with us, as potent as Summer Love.
Every day now I hear the reports of how wonderful it is that Summer is coming… even though we are only in the early part of Spring, the temperatures are already fluctuating wildly. Yes it is wonderful and I adore the beautiful spring and summer flowers we have. The beautiful display of Jacarandas are amazing this year.
A jacaranda lined road.
After a relatively dry winter throughout most of the country, and some idiotic bureaucratic interference that has prohibited back burning and fire breaks by property holders to prevent their homes being caught up in bushfire situations, we have masses of tinder dry, bushfire fuel loads surrounding homes and properties.
The insanity of land management being taken away from property owners, which is so closely aligned to the land care Aborigines have used for hundreds of years, is not simply ludicrous, it is criminally insane. I am all for Greening Australia, protecting our heritage and doing the right things now, but we cannot and must not put our heads in the sand and have puerile decisions made based on land management that dates back into the last century and before.
image from http://www.sabushfiresolutions.com.au
This is typical of what farmers and landholders, rural and regional, have to sit back and accept. The fuel load here is enormous. As the foliage falls and builds under the canopy at ground level, and the dried grasses mound up, the gases from the eucalyptus trees can reach combustible proportions. Flash fires can occur, lightning can strike, but you cannot prevent the thoughtlessness of people throwing lit matches or cigarettes out of car windows. More despicable are those who delight in deliberately setting fires once the conditions are at their worst.
As the temperature rises and the winds come across the super heated land, conditions for spontaneous bush fires escalate. Add to this the intense fuel loads you see above and this is what can and does happen…..
image from http://www.whatarebushfires.com.au
We are very fortunate that we live in Byron Bay, in a beautiful green area, but we are still prone to the influence and devastation of bushfire. Just not to the same extent. Since last weekend there have been over thirty bush fires raging in the Blue Mountains area in New South Wales and over a hundred throughout the state. Thousands of hectares destroyed. Over a hundred homes lost, and this is just so far. There are fires raging in the deep gorges and valleys that cannot be fought. They have to burn themselves, and all the wildlife, out.
image from waterworksvalley.com – Waterworks Valley in the Blue Mountains
This is what the rural fire brigade and their cousins in the city fire departments and local volunteers have been fighting. Until the last fires are extinguished, the final devastating total will not be known. This is not the first bush fire this season. It will not be the last.
The crime is – much of this could be avoided with common sense.
Yes, I am angry. Our fire fighters, volunteers, home and land owners, our domestic animals and wildlife, none of them should be placed in harm’s way because a small minority of bureaucratic Green terrorists think removal of fuel load is not good for the land. Perhaps THEY should be in the front line fighting the fires.
Off my Soap Box, just for a while.
Blessings to all our fire fighters, home and land owners, our animals caught in the fires unable to escape, the injured wildlife, and all those left behind to try to put everything back together again.
Susan x
© Susan Jamieson 2013
Owls and Orchids 
The Greens can’t have it both ways, they want a pristine environment, back to how it used to be. Strange, considering before the arrival of the Aborigines the Australian landscape was vastly different to what it is today. Their hunting technique was to set large areas alight to drive the prey out, hopefully cooking them at the same time. Constant burning over time changed the way trees grew and how seeds propagated. As you may know there are some plants and trees that won’t germinate unless they are burnt first.
The sad thing is many councils won’t let property owners clear land around their houses. The removal of cattle from the Snowy region means that vast areas are now choked by undergrowth. people building homes at the top of ravines and gorges in bushland areas doesn’t help them when fire strikes. The list goes on. Great post Susan.
Cheers
Laurie.
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Thanks Laurie. I’m feeling very cranky – probably the rain/pain. I’d love to use the ‘Greenies’ with the imbecilic ideas and use them as kindling, somewhere they couldn’t cause a problem ….. Perhaps in the middle of the Simpson. Its a nuisance when you can’t think!
Ciao. Susan
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Oh, cranky pants eh? I feel for you Susan, prolonged pain and discomfort is not for the fainthearted. That’s a good idea, send them out to green the Simpson desert. You take care of yourself, you hear?
Cheers
Laurie.
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I didn’t realize you lived in Australia! Those bushfires look pretty serious. We don’t have anything on that scale here in Canada. Hopefully this summer won’t be too bad in spite of the dryness and homeowners prohibited from burning the brush around their own homes.
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Thanks Natalya. I just heard that the weather front they hoped would turn the fires back on themselves has changed direction. Sydney, the NSW capital is ringed by fire with all but one road in or out closed.
Praying for a good rain for them, just not enough to cause flooding. It’s a crazy world we live in.
Ciao. Susan x
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That sounds bad but hopefully you will get some rain to help put out some of the fires.
Crazy world, indeed!
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I grew up in the farming regions of southern central NSW in Australia. On one side, we had wheat farming country where if a fire took hold, it could travel for 20 miles at a time til it found a natural barrier to stop it, because with a strong wind blowing, not much else would. On the other side, we had the wild forest country in the ranges towards the river at Jugiong, where once it got hold, nothing but a mountain goat could keep in front of it.
There is little that angers and infuriates me more than seeing these greenie bureaucrat terrorists in their air conditioned offices making decrees about saving wildlife and habitats when they are almost entirely responsible for much of the loss of diversity in our bushland in the last 25 years.
It is an act of treason against the country to stand in the way of the proper management of the country, especially in relation to bushfires. 192 people lost their lives in victoria a couple of years back for exactly this reason, and still, the arguments go on about it.
Yes, it’s lovely to live with nature, but it’s amost a death sentence when these laws are in place. It’s not “if a bushfire occurs” but “when a bushfire occurs” and the recriminations will start all over again as the bodies are counted and the damage is tallied.
Black Friday, Ash Wednesday, Black Saturday, the journos are running out of names for the disasters…! The families of the victims mourn still.
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We pray for rain and fear flooding. ‘They’ pray for sun and we fear bush fires. What a crazy world we live in. ❤
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Congratulations!! I’ve nominated you for The Imagine Award! In order to find out more about how to accept this award, click on the link below. If you would like to decline the award (which is okay—no worries!)…if you could pass it onto a blog which you find to be very creative, that would be great. This is a new award, so I would like to see it spread out through the WordPress community. Spread the love, and again congratulations! Your great imagination and creativity are deeply appreciated.
~Jenn~
http://myfibrotasticlife.wordpress.com/2013/10/18/today-is-the-day/
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It must be scary to live with the threat of bush fires. I live in a very soggy area so it’s something we rarely, if ever, have to worry about here. Thank you for visiting my blog so I could find yours!
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