The apple never falls far from the tree

I received this email from my Dad yesterday and thought it was such a good read that I'd post it here. The bushfires in Victoria are headline news around the world at the moment, but 42 years ago a very similar thing happened in Tasmania - more than 60 dead, more than 1000 homes lost. My Dad lived through hell that day - the only reason the family home both he and I grew up in survived is because of him.
If you have taken any interest in the recent Victorian bushfires, then take the time to read what someone who has lived through it before, many times, thinks. Admittedly it is quite long, but I found it fascinating (if you are really pressed for time you can probably skip the 'factors' bit, but the rest I would recommend).

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The red steer is loose


On the 7th of February 1967, Bernard and Jean Pidd’s house in Hobart
burned to the ground in the bushfires which seared through southern
Tasmania.

On the 7th of February 2009, Bernard and Jean Pidd’s house north-east of
Melbourne burned to the ground in the bushfires which seared through
south-eastern Victoria.

I don’t know Bernard & Jean, other than by name, although I probably met
them 33 years ago at the marriage of their daughter with my friend Dave
Brown. Dave tells me that they had a lucky escape from the fires - they
delayed their flight from their house by 5 minutes for some reason. On
their way to safety they passed numerous crashed cars and dead people,
caught in the fire front which had passed only a few minutes before the
Pidds' journey out. They are now safely in Melbourne and staying with
their son, just two of the 7000 people whose homes have been destroyed.

Some are saying the Victorian fires are Australia’s worst natural
disaster. It is (since it continues, nearly 2 weeks on, with more hot
windy weather forecast) neither natural nor the worst.

Some are saying it could have been prevented by regular and frequent
burning of the bush - so-called controlled burns for fuel reduction. It
could not.

Some say it must never be allowed to happen again. It will.

All I can say is that I am annoyed at the stupidity of humans, both before
and after this event, while at the same saddened by the grief and despair
being suffered by so many Australians. And by the pain being felt by so
many animals, native and domestic, which have been burned or if not burned,
now cannot find food.

Two powerful memories have stayed with me since the 1967 fires: the smell
of a hot bushfire and the smell of living sheep flesh which has been
burned. It is quite different to the smell of burnt dead flesh. The
smell of burning bush I can live with with, although it raises the heart
rate, but I hope I never have to smell burned flesh again.

I buried 105 Border Leicester Merino cross ewes a few days after the 1967
fire came and went. I doubt that anyone accurately tallied the number of
domestic stock which were either killed outright, died later of their
burns or were put down. The only man who I know of who was attempting
that, a local Department of Agriculture officer, had tears in his eyes as
he added my 105 to his list and told of others some distance away who had
lost thousands of head. The ABC’s Country Hour on the Monday after the recent
fires had the story of a Victorian cattle farmer who normally would run
600 head. As a result of the drought, he was down to 350. With his
fences gone, the barns and other sheds burned to the ground and pasture
crisped to a black film, he had somehow managed to get the rest of the
cattle to yards 8 km away and send them off to sale and probable
slaughter. And yet, he considered himself lucky. His family was safe and
they still had a house.

My house was safe as well. Those who have visited here will be able to
picture the scene when I say that most of the paddocks were burned, the
fence around the back of the house was burned and a stack of about 5,000
bales of hay where the top barn is now, (near the new house), was
vaporised in just a couple of hours. Indeed, some of you would have been
invited to guess the age of a small piece of rock from the barn site.
None of you successfully guessed that it was a crude form of obsidian, the
remnants of the minerals in the hay created on the afternoon of Tuesday
February 7, 1967.

For me, and many of the farmers in southern Tas at that time, the
principal problem was not the passage of the fire, but the drought which
followed. My late brother in law, who had a dairy farm nearby , formed
the Kingborough Fodder Relief Committee in conjunction with several other
farmers. That organisation took on the task of co-ordinating distribution
of donated fodder to needy farmers. The chairman of the committee regales
with glee that things were so rushed and busy in the early days, that
committee meetings were held in the car as they drove between district
meetings. That committee had its work cut out until rains came in July.

Already donated fodder is flowing in to Victoria - from NSW, Canberra, South Australia, Tasmania.

In the months after the Tasmanian fires, we had Rural Youth members from
South Australia come for a couple of weeks to build fences. As I
remember, the guy who stayed with us was a good worker and easy to get along with, but he refused to drive tractor on the hills. It is a just a
tad flatter in Kingston, South Australia, than Kingston Tasmania!

Already the call for fencing contractors for Victoria has gone out. I
expect fencing materials will be moving from warehouses all over Aus by
now, and the cynic in me says that will be one way to stimulate the economy.
Indeed, the whole business of these fires - and the rebuilding which will
follow - will stimulate a number of sectors in our economy, but what a
hard way to achieve it.

Fire fighters from NZ and the US are already here, battling the 7 or
so fires which continue to burn, some still out of control.

Why did it happen? What were the factors involved? One short answer is
that we are yet to find out, but hopefully many answers will come from the
Commission of Enquiry set up by the Victorian government. The other short
answer is that everyone has an opinion - but nobody knows if it is valid.
The long answer is both complicated and simple.

Complicated because there are many factors involved. Simple because if
more people had used more commonsense, we would not be discussing this
tragedy, which 10 days on was still the lead item in TV news bulletins.
Until then, it seems that for many journalists, the rest of the world had
ceased to exist.

The long story of many factors goes as follows:

1. The vegetation

Australia’s eucalypt forests (or bush to use the older term) is unique.
From the point of view of fire, it consists of four layers.

On the ground, a layer of dead leaves and small branches. This slowly
accumulating his layer might be only 30mm thick and patchy, but is ideal
for carrying fire, even in quiet wind conditions. Our gum trees
frequently grow in infertile soils, so they have evolved mechanisms to
pull nutrients out of dying leaves, so that the energy is not lost to the
world outside the tree. As a consequence, there is little energy
available in the leaves to insects and fungi to rot them. In addition,
the eucalypt oil content in the leaves inhibits rotting so the leaves
tend to stay on the soil surface sometimes for years. Not only that, to
conserve water, the trees shed both leaves and small branchlets
frequently but principally in autumn as the soil dries out, or at anytime
in a drought.

Above this is the understorey comprised of a wide range of plants up to
(normally) 2 m high. The density and height will vary from sparse to
impenetrable, and be determined principally by the rainfall of the area.
This understorey can also burn fiercely, depending on its membership, and
is ideal to lead fires up into the eucalypts proper.

All eucalypts are a fire climax plant i.e. they have evolved to live with
fire and be resistant to most fires. Indeed, some require it for
regeneration as our forestry industry is keen to repeat ad nauseum as they
burn the bejesus out of our native forests after clearfelling them.

Part of the gum tree’s defence mechanism is thick bark which is shed from
many trees in long streamers. Other trees, such as our very useful E.
obliqua has a thick fibrous bark (thus its common name of Stringy Bark or
just Stringy). Whatever the case, the bark is a good way for the fire to
get from the understorey into the leaf area proper or as sometimes
happens, into the tops of the trees.

This is where the leaves are densest because as my forester friend Frank
says, eucs are one big solar panel, fighting amongst themselves to grab
all the sunlight they can.

When the fire reaches this fourth level, it is said to have “crowned” . A
fire which has crowned is the fear of all firefighters, because it means
that the conditions are so severe that not only is it impossible to
control the fire, but burning embers can be swirled high into the air in a
fire storm or be carried horizontally by the wind, causing spot fires or
“spotting” as much as many kilometres ahead of the main fire. In the 1967
fire, glowing cow manure, bowling along the ground like catherine wheels,
driven by the wind which was so strong it blew me off my feet, set the
haystack alight.

In addition, a crowned fire indicates that eucalyptus oil is vaporising
and burning with intense heat in large masses of flame. I have video of
the last fire to cause me real concern here, 12 years ago, which burned
most of the range of hills between Kingston and Hobart. In that video,
sheets of flame several hundred metres long can be seen flaring downwind
of the fire front at tree top height. One of the ways people and animals
are killed is by radiant heat and it was said of the Victorian fires that
the radiant heat was such that it was lethal at 200 metres.

2. Weather conditions.

Understand that wood (or coal, or anything flammable) does not burn
directly. The gas which is produced by the fuel during the burning (or
oxidising) process is what burns.

At higher temperatures, it is easier for the fuel (in this case wood) to
be turned into a gas and so a fire burns better on a hot day than on a
cold day. Temperatures in Victoria were as high as 47 degrees C.

Similarly, wood which is dry will reach the gasification temperature more
easily and more quickly if it is dry than if it is damp or wet because
energy is not required to boil off the water in the fuel to allow it to
gasify. Victoria has been suffering dry conditions for almost a decade and
on the day relative humidity was 7%.

And now the wind comes into play. The more rapidly oxygen can be supplied
to a fuel, the faster the fuel will oxidise of burn. Give a fire a wind
of 100 k.p.h. and you have a blast furnace. In Victoria on that day, the
fires were driven so fast by the wind that only the people at the fire
front knew what had happened. Police, fires service people, radio,
internet were all left behind and it was some hours before the size of the
tragedy became apparent to the outside world.

Finally, the presence of electrical storms meant that some of the fires
were started by lightning strikes.

But not all. Police have now charged a man with starting one of the
fires which killed a number of people. What chance does he have of a
fair trial, is the question many are asking.

At least one other fire is reported to have started when electricity lines
fell from a pole in a paddock. The line is owned by a Singapore based
company, whose liability was limited to $100 million by an Act of
Parliament when the sale was made a few years ago. It seems that the
Victorian tax payers will have to pay for the other $400 million damage
the fire is said to have caused. And of course insurance premiums are
bound to rise as the industry attempts to remain stable, the problem
compounded by the global financial situation.


3. Lifestylers.

With a couple of decades of strong economic growth under them, many
Australians desire to move from the cities (where the majority live) to
either the coast (and become seachangers) or to the bush (and become
treechangers).

If you are to become a treechanger, you should do it properly. Live
amongst the trees, clearing only enough to give you a view from the
kitchen or lounge room window. Build a cheap house coz, having left the
city lifestyle, it is time to slow down a bit - which means there is a
limited income and a limited budget. Few of the houses in the burned
areas had much chance of surviving because of inadequate design or lack of
their owner’s preparedness.

We still do not know the final death toll. With 185 confirmed dead and
more than 20 still listed as missing, the final figure is as yet only a
guess.

And already the “culture wars” ( the argument about what should have been
done and when and by whom) are on. The most disgraceful example of
destructive writing is likely to be a front page column in the Sydney
Morning Herald by Miranda Devine, who wrote last Saturday :

“If politicians are intent on whipping up a lynch mob to divert
attention from their own culpability, it is not arsonists who should
be hanging from lamp-posts but greenies.”

She has been widely condemned for her words.

In addition, there is very hot debate on whether or not fuel reduction
burns before the fire season would have helped. As I understand it, on
the day nothing apart from bare soil or wet water would have delayed the
fires’ progress.

And now Melbourne is facing the prospect of a reduced and contaminated
water supply, since most of the fires were in the city’s water catchment.
Reduced inflows will be the norm for many years because eucs growing
rapidly as a cohort suck enormous amounts of water from the environment
-just ask farmers near plantations anywhere. Contaminated water is a risk
because a big rain now would wash vast quantities of ash and topsoil - not
to mention the fire retardant chemicals dropped by aircraft over wide
areas - into the reservoirs.

And in all this, very few people are talking about the loss of habitat.
When there is a fire front 32 km wide, and the fire is as fierce as it
was, what chance does wildlife have? Some commentators who should have an
understanding of this are suggesting 100 million animals have either
perished, been badly injured or are dying of thirst or starvation.

And what happens next? If the dry conditions continue for the next few
years as climate change gets wound up, will all this happen again. You
bet, say those who have assessed the risks carefully! The brief history
of major fires is as follows: late 1800s, Victoria; 1939, Victoria; 1967,
southern Tasmania;1983, Victoria; 2003, Canberra; 2006, South Australia;
2009, Victoria.

While the fires were burning the heart out of Victoria, record rain fall
was inundating north Queensland. Indeed, one report I heard was that at
one stage there was more of Queensland under water than not. The floods
have since moved south into northern New South Wales.

It's a big country, Australia.

Through all this, Hobart has been quietly celebrating the visit of Charles
Darwin in “The Beagle” in 1836. He sailed out of Hobart Town on February
17, after 11 days here. In that time he collected many geological and
biological specimens, climbed Mt Wellington, celebrated his 27th. birthday
at a dinner with the local gentry and handled a brown snake. It seems he
had no idea that the snake was both venomous and potentially deadly.
Where would we be had Charles Darwin died of snake bite a few days after
his 27th birthday and 23 years before he published “Origin”?

It seems to me that the snake clan redeemed itself on that day after so
much bad publicity following the Garden of Eden caper, many years before.


JV

Don't you oppress me!

Being a bit sick of cold weather and no hot water and also wanting to save some money I decided to head to Tibet. What a stupid idea. Don't get me wrong, Tibet was great, but in winter it's cold.Very cold. Sure, certainly not ridiculous -30 cold, but still well-below-freezing cold. Which would be fine, except they don't have any central heating (unless you count burning yak shit as heating). Nor running hot water. In fact, some places didn't even have running water. D'oh! Plus, despite hearing all over the place that Tibet is free (y'know, travel agents are always having rallies and stuff advertising Tibet: "Free Tibet! Free Tibet!" and they produce all those stickers 'n' shit that you see everywhere), it bloody wasn't! It was expensive actually. Ah well. Still, it was quite interesting, up to a point.

The first five days involved driving north from Nepal towards Lhasa, the Tibetan capital. The landscape was incredible, across the world's highest plateau at over 4000m above sea level. It was harsh, barren, bleak, inhospitable and unforgiving yet people still manage to carve out an existence, albeit without the trappings of modern living. It's not too difficult to see why religion has flourished here, when people have it tough they tend to turn to 'higher powers' to make 'em feel everything's going to be just dandy in the end and all this hard work really is worth it. Despite their mostly inescapable poverty Tibetans from all over the land make regular, and often very long, pilgrimages to holy sites to pray and worship and of course most importantly to give lots of money to the monks. At every single monastery there are notes of all denominations stuffed into crevices, placed at the feet of statues, poked through fences and just generally scattered about the place. The sole job of most monks seems to be to count this loot. I reckon there'd be more cash in each temple than in an ATM.

On top of this they have quite a collection of bizarre beliefs, including, but not limited to, decision-making lakes (when the Dalai Lama dies, a particular holy lake will tell the monks where the next Dalai Lama currently is); magical demon-thwarting doorstops; making you walk around sacred things in a clockwise direction (never anti-clockwise you evil thing you); prayer wheels (spin the wheel and something important will actually listen and give a shit. Honest) as well as amazing smoke that Buddha can apparently travel down. Yes, Buddha, that rotund and heavy-set, androgynous fella with the smug, self-satisfied smile and hands that appear in a variety of poncy poses. Although to be more precise there are actually heaps of different Buddhas (of course there are!). There's past, present and future Buddha, there's long-life Buddha, happy Buddha (who looks to me to be more aggressive than happy), there's bashful, sad and dopey Buddha, there's sitcom Buddha, footy Buddha, I'm-off-to-the-dogs-and-need-some-luck Buddha and of course the ubiquitous onanism Buddha (I may have made a *few* of those last ones up).

However, this belief system may be on the ropes, as China truly is a cultural bulldozer. Lhasa is now 90% Chinese, and apart from the very quaint Tibetan quarter the rest of it is just another urban sprawl Chinese city (not that I've been to many Chinese cities . . . none in fact . . . but work with me here people). The Tibetan language is only taught to Tibetan kids, and sparingly at that. The government have forced Tibetans to move from their traditional homes in the mountains to brand new houses closer to the tourist highway and forced them to spend large amounts of money making them look nice. The result is villages lining the highway that are indeed quite pretty for the tourists, but quite empty for the inhabitants. Military guards are stationed at each monastery, not to protect the monks but to eavesdrop and be a threatening presence. Although I did managed to fart on one as I was passing close by on a narrow stairway - cop that commie oppressor! Don't you oppress me! Don't you oppress me! It's increasingly harder for Tibetans to keep their cultural heritage and if things don't change in a few generations they will be consigned to the cultural scrapheap. Sure, there has been heaps of progress under Chinese rule with the construction of major infrastructure projects (roads, electricity, running water), but there is a corresponding lack of freedom for Tibetans. It is hard for Tibetans to get a job and indeed keep it (our guide nearly lost his when an army guy posing as a worshiper, the sneaky fuck, demanded to see the photos on all of our cameras. If he had found any photos of soldiers that camera would have been confiscated and our guide would be looking for a new job) and they need a permit from the Chinese government to become monks. Passports for Tibetans to travel just within Tibet are expensive and if they want a passport to travel outside Tibet it is prohibitively expensive. There are police and military everywhere restricting movement and even more spies listening to every day conversations. Apparently Tibetans are paid quite well to spy on other Tibetans. All in the name of progress comrades!

Upon reaching Lhasa we were greeted with the most impressive sight in the city, the Potala Palace, perched high above the masses below. It used to look down onto a wee village, but of course the Chinese demolished that and built one of those gigantic imposing, inhuman concrete squares that socialists are so fond of. The Palace is the seat of the Dalai Lama who heads up the triumvirate of Tibetan Buddhism, the Panchen Lama being second in command and oh fuck me, I'm even boring myself now. I've already learned far more about this nonsense than I would ever care to remember and if I have to see the inside of another monastery ever again I'm going to throttle the nearest monk, even if it is the Dalai Lama. I'm sure he's a real swell guy 'n' all, but like every other bloody religion on this planet Buddhism is simply a number of crackpot beliefs combined with an ethos of "Hey, give us money and we'll have nice thoughts on your behalf so you can have it good when you die. Yay! Give us money now. Money. GIVE US YOUR MONEY". You know it's true.

Summary: Tibet is very cold (certainly in winter anyway) and quite interesting, but if you go be prepared to overload on the Buddhism mumbo-jumbo. The flight back to Kathmandu from Tibet was incredible though, with a stupendous close-up view of the sublime Himalaya, Everest the standout peak exhibiting a tiny trail of cloud. It has to be the most spectacular regular passenger flight in the world. If you ever, ever, EVER get even a hint of a chance then do it.