Fire Country

Fire Country by Victor Steffensen was a birthday present from one of my daughters. I was aware of Steffensen's name and I might have even heard him speak on the radio about Indigenous fire management, and I suspect this 2020 book was the thing that brought him onto the national radar. 

Fire Country was the third book I've read in a row that argues for paying close attention to the land, this time our own country of Australia. Steffensen tells a wonderful story of how he was educated by two elders, who passed on their knowledge to him, and how he himself now shares that traditional knowledge in fire workshops, lectures and demonstrations. He makes a powerful argument for nuanced and careful management of Country; different kinds of vegetation demand different times for burning, and need to be judged individually, according to when the land and the plants hold the right amount of moisture to allow cool, limited burning. It makes a nonsense of holding 'controlled' fuel reduction burns on a set date of the year, or trying to burn off a huge area. 

It's clear that regular, cool, closely supervised burning was the traditional way that First Peoples kept Country healthy, and that we have allowed that careful management to lapse. It just makes so much sense to reintroduce traditional wisdom to what Steffensen describes, heart-breakingly, as 'sick' country -- scarred by the inferno of bushfire, overrun by weeds, choked by dead vegetation. And it's also heart-breaking to read about the pushback from white bureaucracy that Steffensen has had to battle along the way.

Fire Country, like Wild Hares & Hummingbirds and English Pastoral, asks us to reconnect with the land on which we live, to watch it closely and treat it with respect -- not leave it to its own devices, but help it achieve and maintain health, diversity and all kinds of flourishing life.