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Busy busy...

Gulfalan67

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Hi folks

I kinda dropped off this forum for a few weeks. Here's why.

Our wet season (monsoon) flipped to dry season which is the busiest time of year for us in the bush. Even though what happens in North Australia is not really relevant to 'Life in the Wilderness' north of the equator I thought I'd update you on what this entails.

First we will receive no more water until November. What have stored in the tanks will have to last now... for drinking washing irrigation and firefighting. Of course we can go suck out of creeks if we need to for non-potable water.

Second the weeds are out and I've got about four weeks to treat them all before they drop seed and multiply hundred fold... our own property remains virtually weed free, and I work bloody hard to keep it that way. Just a few weeks back a Kangaroo dropped dead close to the house. The Boy took me to the body. After a few weeks it was well decomposed and a perfect patch of weeds were springing from where its stomach had been! Thats how they get onto the property!

But the biggest job is fire preparation. Last week I organised our district fire preparation meeting and we developed our annual fire management strategy. This involves maintenance and grading of our fire trails and fire breaks, property tracks and then strategic boundary burns and fuel reduction burns...

As the grass fuel dries quickly there is a very limited window of time to conduct these burns before the risk of fire 'getting away from us' gets to great.

But without these strategic burns around our district, we'll stand no chance of fighting the wildfires that will come later in the year and our beautiful forests and wildlife will be toasted...

So its a mad time. I'll post some pics of our control burns... some look pretty impressive. Next weekend we'll be lighting a continuous fire front 8km long... All as necessary conservation practice

Alan
 
Respect to you guys Alan. :thumbsup:

Hard work.....organisation........team work and planning.........its not all about pipe and slippers on the veranda watching the sunrise and sunsets.
Nice to know you have each others backs in times of trouble or need........a definite plus and bonus.
Look forward to seeing some pictures of the burn etc........good luck with it.
 
It definitely sounds like a very busy time for yous Alan... got a lot of admiration for people like yourself and wife, proper job 👍🏻 Also looking forward to the pictures 😁

now stop reading this! there’s work to be done 🤔😂
 
Hi folks!

Hope you pomms have been keeping well.

Life has been crazy the last six weeks. I haven't taken many pics while we've been cleaning up and battening the hatches for the fire season. Its been a funny year coming out of two successive years of drought and fire has been much less predictable than usual.

So when walls of flame were towering to treetop height I wasn't reaching for my camera, I was struggling to get the pump for the fire hose on or whatever....

But here are some snaps of the earlier cooler burns in the high country and around our house.

My wife lighting up along a break somewhere
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The Boy watches over our drip torches. He doesn't much like when we burn -but insists in accompanying us to keep an eye on my wife.
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Around our house.... with The Boy watching on
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Me looking off the escarpment down at the fire below the house.
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The Boy backs me up
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A flamer. Can't leave it like this if its close to an unburned boundary. You could pump a tonne of water over it and it would keep going. This is a chainsaw job. Ever chained through a tree burning from the inside out?
IMG-8298.JPG

Cheers

Alan
 

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hell of a hobby you've got there Alan. i don't recall seeing "chainsawing through a flamer" in the safety manual. :D
seriously though, looks like a hell of a job you've got on your hands. we used to get dry season fires in northern British Columbia where i grew up. was bugger all we could do about it, just hope the water bombers were available and they'd be by to give us all a sticky shower (flame retardant in the water drop).
 
I used to be involved in cutting fire breaks through plantations but over the last 20 odd years they're less ans less common here in the UK. The drive to maximise profit has overcome good sense.
 
Mike, interesting what you say about plantation firebreaks (in Uk?). Do they have bushfires over there? So you'll understand my pain. I have the dubious pleasure of establishing and maintaining a couple hundred kilometres of internal and external fire breaks and fire trails around and across the block... it takes up much of my year and is thankless work.

As my wife rightly says, here "we spend four months of the year preparing for the fire season -and eight months fighting fires..." It never ends, and climate change just stacks the odds further and further against us each year.

Teef, Water bombers? I wish! They only use those in areas where there are people and houses and infrastructure to save. They cost up to $100000 a day to operate and so not deployed in wilderness areas.

Where I live we have no fire brigade, no rural fire service - absolutely no back up. I actually have a letter from the government explicitly telling us that. Living out here we have to be prepared and equipped to fight fires ourselves. Hence why I spend months every year preparing, trying to stack the odds on our favour and protect our amazing landscape.

Alan
 
Hi folks!

Hope you pomms have been keeping well.

Life has been crazy the last six weeks. I haven't taken many pics while we've been cleaning up and battening the hatches for the fire season. Its been a funny year coming out of two successive years of drought and fire has been much less predictable than usual.

So when walls of flame were towering to treetop height I wasn't reaching for my camera, I was struggling to get the pump for the fire hose on or whatever....

But here are some snaps of the earlier cooler burns in the high country and around our house.

My wife lighting up along a break somewhereView attachment 33264View attachment 33265
The Boy watches over our drip torches. He doesn't much like when we burn -but insists in accompanying us to keep an eye on my wife.
View attachment 33266
Around our house.... with The Boy watching on View attachment 33267
Me looking off the escarpment down at the fire below the house.View attachment 33273
The Boy backs me up
View attachment 33274
A flamer. Can't leave it like this if its close to an unburned boundary. You could pump a tonne of water over it and it would keep going. This is a chainsaw job. Ever chained through a tree burning from the inside out?
View attachment 33275
Cheers

Alan


cracking pictures Alan , scary to ! Sounds like you’ve been busy right enough, amazing to me, tho an everyday advent for you but it must still hold an element of aww even to you 😁 spent a lot of time watching Australia through different programs on YouTube and tv , mainly the outback and coastal stretches, it’s a fantastic place you have there Alan
 
Teef, Water bombers? I wish! They only use those in areas where there are people and houses and infrastructure to save. ...
yeah, i'm guessing that your fire situation is rather more severe than ours was.

we had fires, usually every year or so, but the bombers were always an option. i have no idea who was paying the bill but i'm guessing it was the logging companies because they had a vested interest in keeping the locals happy and the forests in loggable condition.

i know that the logging companies had leases on different sections of land and if theirs got burned out they were SOL. they'd just pack up and leave, assuming they couldn't buy up someone else's lease. of course once they'd logged an area out they left it in such horrible condition that it probably would have been better if it had gone up in smoke but i'm a second generation hippy so my opinion on such matters is probably a bit skewed.
 
yeah, i'm guessing that your fire situation is rather more severe than ours was.

we had fires, usually every year or so, but the bombers were always an option. i have no idea who was paying the bill but i'm guessing it was the logging companies because they had a vested interest in keeping the locals happy and the forests in loggable condition.

i know that the logging companies had leases on different sections of land and if theirs got burned out they were SOL. they'd just pack up and leave, assuming they couldn't buy up someone else's lease. of course once they'd logged an area out they left it in such horrible condition that it probably would have been better if it had gone up in smoke but i'm a second generation hippy so my opinion on such matters is probably a bit skewed.
Teef, what you describe sounds like real short -term thinking, reflecting the attitudes of Forestry industries about a decade ago. I'd like to think today most primary industries are recognising the need to get more sustainable in their operations and business.

In today's world and the crises we face, we've all gotta be hippies! My wife and I certainly don't identify as hippies and are pretty straight folks. But we put much of our energy and money into conservation and land management and protecting our patch. So I guess we're non paid-up members of the hippy movement! Ok, just off to listen to some Joan Baez and Hendrix and suck on a reefer. 🤣

Alan
 
@Gulfalan67 , i reckon you've probably nailed it. the situation i'd described was what i knew growing up in B.C. in the '70s so yes, very likely old-school practices. when they totally logged off the area i'd grown up in and turned it into a big, square wasteland that could be easily identified in satellite photos i think i pretty much gave up on the whole thing and went off to see the world. what they get up to these days is unknown to me.

as to being "hippies" what i really meant was being into the conserve and conservation thing too. i wouldn't touch a reefer with a barge pole! that's one thing about having a hardcore hippy mother, cured me of any interest in the "mind expanding" part of it at an early age. for us a couple of tequila shooters is about as wild as things get. we do go through a shocking amount of chamomile tea though, not to mention my fondness for home-made patchouli soap. i'm with you on the Hendrix though: great then, great now, imho.
 
Luckily the trend in forestry within the UK has changed emphasis and as plantations are cleared they're often being replaced with mixed deciduous woodland that is a bit more wildlife friendly. It still looks like hell when the contractors move on but I learned to look at this over the span of decades, not months....what I'm seeing in the UK these days is giving me hope
 
....what I'm seeing in the UK these days is giving me hope
glad to hear it! there's a spruce (?) plantation nearby that i reckon is due for the chop. i've been dreading the day but if they're managing these things more responsibly then taking the long view makes sense. still, i'll hate to see it go. had some lovely tea and hammock days out there.
 
I've been watching the larch plantations disappear, but then again, many of them were diseased. It's great to see the young replacement growth becoming visible from a distance as it comes into leaf.
 
I've been watching the larch plantations disappear, but then again, many of them were diseased. It's great to see the young replacement growth becoming visible from a distance as it comes into leaf.

Mike what's a Larch tree? Never heard of it.

Don't bother replying.... Will Google

Alan
 
Mike what's a Larch tree? Never heard of it.

Don't bother replying.... Will Google

Alan
Morning Alan Larch is a soft wood often used for making fence panels and things like that. If you don't treat the wood it can be prone to rot
 
Morning Alan Larch is a soft wood often used for making fence panels and things like that. If you don't treat the wood it can be prone to rot

Ok so its a conifer, a pine tree of the northern hemisphere. Learnt something new today.

We have Cypress pine here on our property - up on the hill tops and Ridge lines. They suppress fire -the fallen needles that build up around them on the ground are completely inflamable...we wonder whether natural selection favours those that have fire resistant needles in fire prone savanna woodlands. Anyway they don't burn when everything around them does.

Alan
 
fwiw Larch is a magnificent tree. lovely wood, makes excellent furniture and firewood, smells The Best, quite hardy, grows to a good height and offers a good bit of shade. although it looks like a conifer it looses its needles over the winter (see photos). one of my favourite native UK trees.

larch2.jpeg


larch.jpeg

larch3.jpeg
 
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