Her beauty and her terror … The wide brown land, Australia, is open for business

“The best way to sup­port Aus­tralia, Aus­trali­an com­munit­ies, and the tour­ism sec­tor is to keep vis­it­ing,” says Tour­ism Aus­tralia on its bush­fire inform­a­tion resources web page.

“If you can­not travel to an affected area due to bush­fires, one of the many ways to help includes res­chedul­ing instead of canceling …” 

If you didn’t already know, your cor­res­pond­ent is based in Aus­tralia. A lot of the time, any­way. And away from the recent con­flag­ra­tions, fortunately. 

There are a lot of places in Aus­tralia that are a long way from those fires. Aus­tralia is a very big coun­try as you prob­ably know. Yet many of the fire maps you may have seen on social media are ter­ribly mis­lead­ing, mak­ing it look like the whole coun­try is on fire. Your cor­res­pond­ent has seen these maps shared by tour­ism pro­fes­sion­als in tour­ism pro­fes­sion­al groups. Very unprofessional.

Sev­er­al years ago there were large and very dan­ger­ous bush­fires in the South West region of West­ern Aus­tralia, not very far from Wal­pole where your cor­res­pond­ent spends a lot of his time. So “GT” can endorse Tour­ism Australia’s sug­ges­tion for vis­it­ors to res­ched­ule rather than cancel. 

Why?

The Aus­trali­an bush is often at its most beau­ti­ful when recov­er­ing from fire; when vibrant shades of green and gold, pink and red sprout from coal-black earth and trunks and stumps. And Aus­trali­ans from the bush are just as resi­li­ent, epi­tom­ised by their vol­lie fir­ies (volun­teer firefighters).

Nature’s recov­ery from the most recent fires over east is already under­way. Pho­to­graph­er Mur­ray Lowe has been out and about cap­tur­ing images from around Kul­nara in New South Wales. And his beau­ti­ful images are going vir­al. “There is life out there,” he writes. “And so mar­vel­lous to see it all once again regain­ing it’s foot hold on this parched and scorched landscape.”

In the days, weeks, and months after the South West fires that “GT” exper­i­enced sev­er­al years ago it was incred­ible to see car­bon-based life forms, just like us but noth­ing at all like us, rise so quickly from the ashes. And the fam­ous West­ern Aus­trali­an wild­flowers that fol­lowed in spring, after a winter dous­ing, were some­how extra spe­cial framed as they were against clean­er, less busy backgrounds. 

It’s almost as if the Aus­trali­an bush needs fire. And many, includ­ing the first people, would argue that it does. 

Since that dan­ger­ous time exper­i­enced in the magic­al forests of the South West, there seems to have been many more pre­scribed haz­ard reduc­tion burns under­taken by our state-based Parks & Wild­life crews. Touch wood, that strategy will help keep your correspondent’s humble place safe for many sum­mers to come.

If one were to dis­pas­sion­ately con­sider, from mul­tiple sources, what did or did not con­trib­ute to the fires many hun­dreds and thou­sands of kilo­metres away in the east­ern states, one would be left confused. 

It’s com­plic­ated. And it’s not a great idea for “GT” nor any oth­er non-expert to add to the con­fu­sion with a half-baked hypo­thes­is set out to cool on a social sill. 

Let those who should know have their respect­ful debates. Let us not blindly bar­rack and shout for our polit­ic­al col­ours. There is fire and life and sens­ible poli­cy­mak­ing at stake, not trophies. 

What is crys­tal clear is that your correspondent’s sun­burnt coun­try is, as Tour­ism Aus­tralia is keen to point out, open for your tour­ism busi­ness. Res­chedul­ing rather than can­cel­ling vis­its to burnt out areas should work out very well. 

For the recov­ery of an Aus­trali­an land­scape and com­munity will likely be stun­ning to see; cel­eb­rat­ing what was before and what might be …

For flood and fire and fam­ine,
She pays us back threefold

From Dorothea Mack­eller­’s “My Coun­try” (c.1908)

Fea­tured image: Like a wreath, epi­corm­ic (from under bark) regrowth from the base of a Euca­lyptus, four months after the 2009 Black Sat­urday bush­fires in Strathewen, Vic­tor­ia. Pic by Robert Ker­ton, CSIRO (CC BY 3.0) via Wiki­me­dia.