by Bill Gammage
native grass in those days, you don’t see it now . . . Because it’s not burnt, you have to burn to get native grass . . . you would light it up at about ten o’clock in the morning and three or four o’clock it would all go out, the next day you would light it up again. The bush was alive with possums and wallabies and kangaroo rats . . . it was only a little fire, it never used to get up in the trees and burn the possums . . . the real oldies followed the burning patterns of the natives in keeping the place green . . . learnt to burn little patches, that they wanted for their existence the same as the blackfellow—of course not winter and not spring—because you kill all the little birds and animals—and so summer burning.53
Scott makes clear how crucial timing was. Whereas fuel control was a fire plan’s baseline, timing was its end point, considering both fuel and purpose. Particular animal and plant communities needed and got very precise fire timings and intensity.54 Trickling cool fires and clearing hot fires were timed to keep species in balance. On dry Sydney sandstone people burnt cool fires in spring, but hot fires in early summer to open hard seeds and pods or germinate legumes.55 In north Queensland early Dry fires promote some shrubs and grasses, late Dry fires promote others and herbs.56 When to burn grass might hinge on its varying growth from year to year, or on associated tubers or annuals, some killed by fire, others needing it to flower, seed or compete. These needs are easily unbalanced. For example badly timed fire promotes unpalatable perennials like Blady Grass or Bunch Spear Grass at the expense of fodder grasses,57 and has let Spinifex expand its range to become ‘the most common organism in the dry three-fifths of Australia’.58 Yet plant communities embracing different fire responses thrived in 1788. Multiply this by Australia’s 25,000 species, and a management regime of breathtaking complexity emerges.
Situating plants located grazing animals and their predators as precisely as a farmer with paddocks. ‘The burning of country was not at all random’, Kimber observed,
there was greater attention to areas favoured by certain nutritious or otherwise useful plants and to areas favoured by certain animals . . . Knowledge of the locality of previously burnt areas clearly aided men in their hunting—and also resulted in greater focussing of animals than if lightning-induced fires spread fiercely, wildly and unpredictably.59
Many animals depend on specific and unnatural fire:
The Tjukurpa [Dreaming] shows Anungu how animals will be with fire and burnt country. For example, some dragon lizards and other small animals don’t like the ground after it’s been burnt. They go away for a while, and then come back when the spinifex has grown again. Some animals, such as the spinifex hopping-mouse, like it both ways. They move into the burned areas to feed and then return to safety in the large unburnt spinifex hummocks where they have their burrows. Kalaya and malu (emu and kangaroo) do not like freshly burnt country but come back to it after rain has put on the green feed. Most animals and birds love the green feed near water.60
Mallee fowl survive only small, patchy fires, frequency depending on terrain,61 so people burnt often enough to limit fuel, but carefully enough to let the birds flourish. Gliders and possums like frequent fire,62 but rat kangaroos need casuarinas burnt about every seven years, a native mouse needs heath burnt every 8–10, mainland tammar wallabies need dense melaleuca burnt very hot every 25–30.63 In the Centre, ‘When the little emus are on the ground [about August] you do not burn.’64 Small desert marsupials need mature Spinifex for shelter beside young Spinifex to eat, which cool fire makes, but in West Australian heath cool fire is associated with an alarming decline of both the lowland grass wren, apparently by depleting its food, and Caley’s Grevillea, because patches attract small mammals which eat out its seed.65 All these plants and animals thrived in 1788, making clear that people timed a great variety of local and specific fires over many centuries.
Most of Australia was burnt about every 1–5 years depending on local conditions and purposes, and on most days people probably burnt somewhere. Winter fires were common, especially in the inland and north. On the Lachlan Oxley saw frequent winter fires,66 and on the Maranoa (Qld) Mitchell explained that in winter ‘the natives availed themselves of a hot wind to burn as much as they could of the old grass, and a prickly weed which, being removed, would admit the growth of a green crop, on which the kangaroos come to feed, and are then more easily got at’.67 In South Australia’s winter Johannes Menge saw plains ‘exactly like the Parks I saw in London . . . the old grass having been burnt by the natives & the new grass having grown a foot high an emerald colour out of the black gave the eyes a delightful impression . . . The grass is everywhere 5ft when not burned [and] bears a corn like barley.’68 Northwest of Ooldea (SA) William Murray saw winter fires promote both scrub and grass: ‘sandhills to the west, which are very high, have had large areas burnt, and there is very plentiful young bush feed and some fair grassy patches. The fires bring up a lot of young acacia, and the patches which have been burnt are always much better for feed than the older scrub.’69 Only cool winter fires make the feed–shelter mosaics essential for Western Hare Wallabies, now close to extinction,70 while McDouall Stuart, Giles and David Lindsay all saw grass springing from autumn to spring fires apparently where Spinifex is now, suggesting that fires today may be too hot.71
Except in the Wet, most fires were lit in summer, when this is now a criminal offence. ‘The Natives . . . fire . . . the thick brushes and old grass every summer,’ James Atkinson wrote, ‘the young herbage that springs up in these places, is sure to attract the kangaroos and other game.’72 On desert dunes Wells saw extensive areas blackened ‘apparently last summer’,73 and Francis Singleton commented on a West Australian government proposal to ban summer burning by Aborigines:
It appears to be about one half of the sandy land is burnt over by the fires annually . . . The herbage, unless it has been burnt in the previous summer becomes exceedingly hard, and is usually refused by the stock . . . To frame a statute forbidding the Natives to fire the bush would I fancy prove abortive; and could such a law be carried out in practice I should conceive it to be an unjust one. The Aborigines look forward to the summer season with the same feelings as Europeans. To both it is the time of harvest. It is then they gather in by means of these fires their great harvests of game.74
When in summer fires were lit varied with how damp the country was, how big people wanted patches to be, which food plants were ready, which seed had germinated, whether game was to be attracted or moved, and so on. Grass-seed eaters burnt after harvest, usually in late summer, relying on timing and damp plant bases to fetter the flames; tuber eaters mostly in early summer once tubers matured. Wet country was lit whenever fuel was dry enough, which meant mostly in summer.75
In any season, people timed most (not all) fires to go out at night: overnight fires could confess loss of control. To decide what day, even what hour, to burn, managers took account of wind, humidity, aspect, target plants and animals, and fuel loads. They burnt on hot, windy days if it suited,76 but wind was commonly an autumn or winter ally. It aimed fire; dew, rain, frost or snow restrained it. In southwest Tasmania, William Sharland
suddenly . . . opened into ground recently burnt . . . apparently immediately before the late snow, and, I conclude, by the natives. The valley had all the appearance, at a distance, of undergoing all the various processes of agriculture,—some parts (the most recently burnt) looking like freshly ploughed fields; and again, other parts possessing the most beautiful verdure from the sprouting of the young grasses and rushes.77
North of Port Hedland (WA) Frank Gregory passed ‘several miles over a plain . . . covered with a short sward of bright green grass, the native fires having swept off the dry grass a few weeks previously; and although there had been no rain since, the heavy dews that fell during the night in these latitudes had been sufficient to produce a rapid growth’.78
Although few noticed the connection, many newcomers saw fire before rain.
Wedge reported
this in Tasmania.79 On the Lachlan, Allan Cunningham met hills ‘lately fired by the natives’—for the next two days it rained heavily.80 Country southeast of Clermont
had evidently been burnt before this late rain by the blacks, and the undulating plains . . . were clothed with a carpet of burnt feed, forming a vivid green dotted with a variety of wild flowers, also many kinds of wild peas and vetches, wild cucumbers, and other trailing plants . . . Never after, during my long experience of the district, did I see it in such splendid condition—I might, indeed, say glory.81
On Cape York, Robert Logan Jack recorded a big fire on 25 August 1879, a thunderstorm the next night, and next day a fire which left ‘grassy patches’.82 In December 1831 Mitchell wrote that for three days ‘the woods were burning before us . . . This evening . . . the country seemed on fire all round us’, but next day rain put the fires out.83 In the Centre fire was commonly timed before rain.84 Walter Smith Purula, a southern Arrernte elder, made clear to Kimber how important rain was, and how much else must be considered:
They watch the white ants—when they start carrying their eggs out of the creek and put them on a high place, then they know it’s going to rain. They start burning again. They generally burn a little patch first . . . close to the rockhole or soakage . . . they make for that burnt patch if the main fire gets out of control. If it’s hilly country, they only burn . . . along the hill, perhaps to promote feed for wallabies or kangaroos or something. If flat country they got to wait for the wind . . . When it is blowing hard enough, they light it, watch it, stand right around, and put it out if need be. They burn in little patches first, and then they put them out. They start on this [bigger] . . . fire then. Some fallen trees might be burning. They got to bury that. Might be ironwood, might be corkwood, and if the wind gets hold of that, it chucks that coal a long way. Instead of that, they bury it. They burn him early, before that weather gets too hot . . . in the middle of the day a fire is dangerous. That whirliwind comes too, and carries the fire along. No good. That’s the whirliwind time then. You got to wait till nearly sundown, and then you can start burning again. Certain time of the year though, they got to do that. You can’t burn wrong time, like, summer time it’s got to be burnt, but no good winter time. They die. All them tucker trees . . . But if they burn them summer time and a storm comes, it grows lovely.8586
The centrality of timing is seen in what happened to southeast eucalypt forests after 1788. Some scientists think that firing scrub promotes not grass but more scrub, and that the more it is burnt the scrubbier it gets. A sensible example is Norman Wakefield’s account of the Rogers family’s experience in northeast Gippsland between 1902 and 1969. When JC Rogers arrived in 1902 old hands told him of
the open, clean-bottomed, park-like state of the forests . . . it had been the accepted thing to burn the bush, to provide a new growth of shorter sweet feed for the cattle . . . The practice was to burn the country as often as possible, which would be every three or four years according to conditions. One went burning in the hottest and driest weather in January and February, so that the fire would be as fierce as possible, and thus make a clean burn . . . the long-followed practice of regularly burning the bush in the hot part of the year has resulted in a great increase of scrub in all timbered areas except the box country. The fires forced the trees and scrub to seed and coppice, and in time an almost impenetrable forest arose.87
Yet in Gippsland no fire also results in dense scrub. At Venus Bay, Robinson noted, ‘This tribe once powerful are defunct and the country in consequence is unburnt having no native inhabitants. This is the reason the country is so scrubby.’88 To make Gippsland ‘park-like’ and ‘clean-bottomed’, it must be burnt correctly, not ‘as fierce as possible’. In Arnhem Land David Bowman found that frequent and timely fire opened the vegetation and stunted woody species.89 South of Canberra John Banks found that frequent hot fires promoted scrub, but fires too cool to germinate scrub replaced it with a grass dominated understorey. By dating eucalypt scars he found that high country fire frequency increased after Europeans came, even in the early period when settlers attempted to imitate 1788 fire. From about a fire a decade from the 1750s to the 1830s, numbers rose to almost one a year by 1950, then under better control fell almost to 1788 frequency. In Aboriginal times hot ‘widespread fires were rare, even in dry periods’, whereas in European times they became common. As a result, whereas ‘the original forest consisted largely of uneven-aged stands of older, widely spaced trees . . . Today this picture has been reversed, with dense even-aged stands—typically dating from major fires in the 1880s, early 1900s, 1926 or 1939—dominating the forest.’90 In short, because of more and hotter fires per decade, scrub fuel built up in European times. Gippsland cattlemen used the wrong fire.91 Timing is crucial.
People lit clean-up fires last in a burn sequence. The fires tidied what was left, cleared mosaics needing rejuvenating, and gave managers clean ground. Cleaning country ‘dominates all other reasons . . . If everything is clean the dreaming will be quiet.’92 In May 1838 Eyre wrote,
The country which had been so burned up and bare as we passed thro’ it in March was . . . beautifully green and verdant . . . all nature’s aspect was so lovely and smiling that we could hardly persuade ourselves that it really was the same region . . . Had my experience not taught me this lesson before I might now have learnt how great a difference a trifling change of time or season makes in the aspect of the country.93
Remarkably, frequency, intensity, timing and scale made similar plant patterns across Australia, whatever the local flora. Comparing fire programs in unlike regions demonstrates this.
On Top End floodplains fire programs began as the Wet ended and continued just into the next Wet. Forest people started later because they needed hotter fires, while dry or stone country programs began in the cold time about the mid-Dry and ended when the grass got too flammable. People began by burning breaks round camps, cemeteries and sensitive places like jungle thickets, pine forests and Paperbark swamps. Fires were careful, cool and small, perhaps burning only a few metres, with respectful ritual, on damp ground, near water, and when dew or rain would put them out, but they protected the places and their spirits, who would blind anyone who burnt too close.
People next began burning grass, then wood. They burnt every day, at first patchy fires near water to make pick, or around fruit trees before they flowered, or on plains to isolate unburnt grass for later hunting fires. They followed the drying country, lighting last the country last to dry. They lit bigger and less patchy fires in the cold time after wind had flattened the grass, allowing more control. By then they might burn over many miles and in the middle of the day, but still with fires which rarely scorched canopies and usually went out at night. On Cape York, Jack so often saw fires in the late Dry that he remarked, ‘The blacks had neglected to burn the country passed over to-day.’94 In all perhaps half the country would be burnt, some more than once, depending on local conditions and purposes.95
In the Centre fuel took longer to build up and plants longer to recover, so most land was burnt less often. People burnt hill bases where water soaked in perhaps every 3–4 years; dune country, especially swales, every 4–10 years depending on regrowth; stone or ridge country perhaps two or three times a lifetime. With fewer people, managers had more but less diverse country to care for than further north. Reaching a desert fire in September 1891, Lindsay ‘found only one native track . . . R eached the second fire in four miles, and found it had been made by the same native. Then sped on hurriedly to another fire, and found it also had been made by the same man.’ Later he found other individuals burning in the same way.96 This was typical desert burning (picture 29).
Since more fuel was dry than further north, fires were more often bigger, but as fully controlled. People began with day fires using damp and wind to protect important places, deter snakes, insects and bad spirits near camps, and promote or preserve feed as drought insurance near water. Explorers came
to assume that a lot of burnt ground meant water. Leichhardt noted, ‘we were sure that a greater supply of water was near, as many patches of burnt grass shewed that the natives had been here very lately’,97 and west of Mt Kintore Tietkins remarked, ‘There is a large area of burnt ground here, leading me to infer that a good water will be found.’ He found it soon after, a claypan sheltering ducks and cranes.98
Hot fires were lit when the tail of the Wet was furthest south in late summer, but not until after the seed harvest, not on dangerous days, preferably not scorching tree canopies, and aimed at stone, sand or earlier breaks. A good fire was slow enough to let animals escape and people keep up, sometimes for weeks, helping it along until rain or burnt ground or a neighbour’s decree put it out. If there was no rain people still burnt in season, though not near sensitive places.99
With unmatched insight, Hallam used historical records to describe southwest Australian fire programs. People adjusted frequency and intensity to how quickly fuel built up, and to plant and animal needs. In late spring or early summer, earlier inland than near the coast, they burnt cool fires around camps, sensitive sites and water. David Ward described a
technique of burning with a fresh breeze in light fuel, so that the back and flank fires are blown out, and the headfire cuts a narrow strip, which can be deliberately aimed at some natural fire break, such as rocks, a lake or swamp, or recently burnt country . . . Coastal Aborigines were (and some further north probably still are) very proud of their ability to anticipate diurnal wind changes from land to sea breeze, so that a strip fire would swing around in a hooked or loop shape, extinguishing itself before nightfall.100
These early fires gave people control when they burnt most ground in late summer. They might burn grass valleys or the Darling Scarp twice a year, but dry ridges only every 15–25 years. Summer fires got into crops, angering settlers, yet some saw their value:
