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The Forum > Article Comments > The answer to burning questions > Comments

The answer to burning questions : Comments

By Roger Underwood, published 29/11/2013

There are many academics who deny that Aboriginal people ever lit anything much other than a campfire.

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Great article Roger.

Yes, the ecological landscape of Australia was greatly altered by Aboriginal burning practices. There were huge changes when this fire regime disappeared. Across the continent, grasslands turned into woodlands, and scrub and open woodlands thickened up. And rainforest advanced into sclerophyll forest here in north Queensland, all on a massive scale.

Yes we need to continue burning. Hazard-reduction burning is of enormous importance. However, it is nowhere near as easy as it was for the indigenes. Human settlements and infrastructure dotted across the landscape, and a patchwork of freehold, leasehold and crown land, with different people in charge of managing different bits of it, makes it notoriously difficult.

We also need to be aware of the setting up of a false sense of security in areas where fuel-reduction burning is undertaken, as firestorm events can still sweep straight through if the ground and mid-strata are burnt but the oil-rich eucalypt canopy is left unburnt.

Undertaking hazard-reduction burning which includes the canopy in eucalypt forest close to built-up areas is nigh on impossible.

In many places, people now live where we as a nation simply should never have allowed them to live. They should have been very strongly urged to move out of these areas after Ash Wednesday in 1983… and certainly after Black Saturday in 2009.

We are going to continue to see fire-storms, with the loss of property and lives.

Despite the science, and the critical awareness of the community and political leaders, this seems to be something that we as a nation are incapable of dealing with.
Posted by Ludwig, Friday, 29 November 2013 6:44:32 AM
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thanks..a lot of anwers
but...a thread needs questions
Posted by one under god, Friday, 29 November 2013 8:00:59 AM
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Very interesting article, thank you.

A bit of a quibble about the following:
'I do not agree with the authors' concerns that human-induced climate change will exacerbate the bushfire problem in Australia. There have always been droughts, heat waves and hot, strong northerly winds and we must expect and prepare for them irrespective of the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere.'
Leaving aside the question of the cause of global warming, doesn't the most basic science tell us that more CO2 promotes plant growth, and more biomass means more fuel for fires; higher temperatures and less rain mean that the biomass is drier and will result in fiercer fires.
Posted by Candide, Friday, 29 November 2013 8:15:49 AM
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I read this article carefully. It never ceases to amaze me the claims made by some about the collective genius of the Aborigines.

They are elevated from being a group of backward primitives who, sadly, the world left behind, into being a cohesive society that, purposefully and rationally, tended to the whole of Australia and its land management.

Pull the other leg!
Posted by David G, Friday, 29 November 2013 8:36:27 AM
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davids ..comment..brings to mind

gen3;23 Therefore the Lord God sent him forth
from the garden of Eden, to till the earth,

Genesis 4:12

When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield
unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be
on the earth.
http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Genesis-4-12/

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%203&version=GNV
cursed is the earth for thy sake:
in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life.

18 [v]Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee,
and thou shalt eat the herb of the field.

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+3&version=MSG

The very ground is cursed because of you;
getting food from the ground
Will be as painful as having babies is for your wife;
you’ll be working in pain all your life long.
The ground will sprout thorns and weeds,
you’ll get your food the hard way,
Planting and tilling and harvesting,
sweating in the fields from dawn to dusk,
Until you return to that ground yourself, dead and buried;
you started out as dirt, you’ll end up dirt
Posted by one under god, Friday, 29 November 2013 9:14:47 AM
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“He (Bill Gammage) rejects the view that Aboriginal people were backward and uncivilised … “.

Australian aborigines were definitely backward (Stone Age) in the 18th Century, and there are still ‘progressive’ white people trying to keep them that way.

Nor were the aborigines ‘civilised’ in any meaning of word. And no, no disparagement to aborigines is intended; the disparagement is aimed at the referenced author. If that author is as brilliant as he is said to be, he should use better language. We have enough wild, unlikely claims made of these Stone Age people as it is, without some author’s misuse or misunderstanding of words further confusing the importance of common sense discussion on things aboriginal.

The simple instinct to survive did not make them ‘civilised’ or forward-thinking; nor did it align them with English noblemen, as suggested by “many of them (settlers)”.

But surely there is no need to waffle on about what people did 30,000 or so years ago.

Roger Underwood himself clearly knows about bushfires (not American ‘wild fires’). Even those of us who merely know that bushfires are a normal part of life in Australia, and not anything to do with “global warming”, accept that something can be done to reduce their effect; and, that’s good old ‘burning off’ that still occurs in some places, but not in enough.

The grip that the Green, so-called environmentalists (the are not environmentalists, but rabid control freaks) have on the throats of authorities in preventing burning off, is criminal.

Every time one of these freaks screeches ‘man-made-climate-change-did-this after a ferocious bush fire, he/she should be interrogated on the real cause – their stupid, dangerous fads and lies.

But, here again, the real problem is the incompetent, frightened-of-loud-minorities Australian politicians who sit back and do nothing.
Posted by NeverTrustPoliticians, Friday, 29 November 2013 12:33:32 PM
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