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Excerpts are from The Wonderland of Nature Journal by Margaret Taylor and Michelle Morrow ©2007
‘August: According to the official calendar it is still winter, but out in the bush the world knows it is spring’ Amy Mack When European settlers came to Australia they brought with them the calendar with four seasons of equal length. This may have suited the small temperate island in the Northern Hemisphere with its fairly predictable seasonal pattern, but it did not match our Southern Hemisphere Australian climate. The Australian aboriginies understood these seasonal changes and this knowledge was essential to their survival. The Aurukun people from Northern Queensland knew to look for mud crabs in January, wild grapes in February and nuts on swamp grass in March. In northern Australia six seasons are now recognised and all based around the wet and dry weather pattern. Similarly, in the southern parts of Australia, a six seasonal pattern is being used by many naturalists. They are early spring, true spring, early summer, late summer, autumn and winter. Naturalists define these seasonal changes when natural events clustered into bursts of flowering, or changed animal behaviour. We can also look and teach our children to look for these natural timelines as we record those events. Bushfires Season ‘The gully trees were in agony for they had never known such heat, and they begged the Gums to shield them. But on the hill the heat was worst of all, and some of the younger Gums were beginning to moan, but their bigger brothers encouraged the weaker ones. When they heard the cries of the gully trees, their hearts ached, for it was beyond their power to protect them from the fiery blasts of Summer.’ Crowns of Fire Bushfires are a natural part of our drought prone country Australia. This was understood by the indigenous people. They used to start small bush fires which would clear the bush of the fallen bark, dried twigs and dead bushes. These fires were slow burning and the animals and bush quickly recovered. This practice helped to prevent the larger bushfires and helped regenerate the bush. These fires were ‘good’ fires. The ‘bad’ fire bushfire season in Australia starts in spring and finishes in late autumn. These bushfires are the fast moving crowning fires or wildfires. They move through the bush, leaping high in the air and spreading through the crowns of the trees, leaving widespread destruction. Gums (eucalyptus trees) are particularly susceptible in these bush fires, as the oil in their leaves make them burn fast and hot. Add strong summer winds to this equation and we get disastrous consequences; native animals, livestock and human lives are in jeopardy and vast areas of land are destroyed. The worst Australian bush fire recorded to date was Black Friday in 1939. Seventy one people died and millions of hectares of the Victorian bush were burnt out. A whole town was destroyed in less than half an hour. Today our equipment is much more sophisticated yet still the fires are often uncontrollable and lives are lost. In these fires many heroes battle the flames to save others. Useful Link |
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