inflaming the frame. australian landscape

The fiery  sunsets of Australia are any Pictorialist's dream.The dust levels in the atmosphere make for   skies that  inflame  the frame.  But then, fire has been part of Australia's Natural History  . History that created the  Geography of the  Land. Land landscaped by fires - natural and those born of fire sticks.

I find this short article an echo of how I first saw Australia and its landscape.

THERE is a crucial difference in how Australians see landscape fire. Non-Aborigines see a threat, destroying people and property. Aborigines know an ally, a friend in the bush, as in the fireplace. One group makes fire docile; the other cannot imagine doing so.

The difference means that the character of landscape fire changed after 1788: from being tame, it became wild. A central Australian elder said that "before the arrival of white people, Anangu did not know about really large bushfires, but now they do . . . the country had been properly looked after and it was not possible for such things as large-scale bushfires to occur".

"You sing the country before you burn it. In your mind you see the fire, you know where it is going, and you know where it will stop. Only then do you light the fire." In other words you blend hard-won local expertise with knowing fire as a living part of the Dreaming, subject to Law via ceremony. The gains were immense. Fire's challenge became opportunity. Controlled fire averted uncontrolled fire, and fire or no fire distributed plants with the precision of a flame edge. In turn this attracted or deterred grazing animals and located them in habitats each preferred, making them abundant, convenient and predictable. All was where fire or no fire put it. Australia was not natural in 1788, but made. This was the greatest achievement in our history.

Trees are central to what Europeans think a "natural" landscape. In 1788 grass was central. Grassland carried many useful plants and most animals with most meat. It was a firebreak, it made seeing and travelling easier, and it confined forest, making forest resources more predictable. Almost always it took the best soil, and probably there was more grass then than now.

We talk of "pristine wilderness", but in 1788 not an inch of country avoided Aboriginal mind and Law. Australia had no wilderness then, no terra nullius. It has both now. In national parks and reserves we have let trees and scrub run wild. This inevitably means hot fires, killer fires, and it discriminates against grassland plants and animals.

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/history-under-fire-20121103-28rbw.html