Mid-Afternoon: My eyes sting. They have burned across the road, from the high paddocks to the roadside. Smoke, thick and blue, marches across our paddocks like an advancing army. Ash drops from the sky. The cats are huddled in the middle of the house. The wild birds have flown away. No such luck for the caged birds. They have to stick it out and fill their air sacs with crap.
Yesterday I cried. Today I am angry. We went into town this morning. The entire east side of Mt. Sylvia is black. The land is so steep I don't think anything can graze on it but it was a thick mat of lantana and bush, doubtless home to many wild creatures. Now it is just a charred black landscape.
The reasons given by the farmers as to why they burn are these: 1. To make firebreaks, to get rid of the dead grass fuel. 2. To control lantana. 3. To sweeten the ground with ash and bring forth fresh grass.
Oddly enough in the twenty years we have lived here the ONLY fires which got out of control and threatened neighbouring properties were fires lit for the above three reasons. In other words, they are lighting fires to protect themselves from their neighbour's fires which are lit to protect them from their neighbour's fires which are lit... Not once has a fire been started by lightening or even a cigarette butt tossed from a passing car.
Lantana adores fire. Fire destroys the green panic which competes with it and fire hardens the branches so that cattle can't get in and graze the grass when it does come back.
As for sweetening the ground, perhaps the first burn might but these idiots burn the same ground year after year after year. What they wind up with is rubble. All the humous and micro-organisms which make for healthy soil are destroyed.
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