The attitude to bush fires here is so weird. It's been really hard to wrap our 'southern states' heads around it. We must have driven past at least 50 bush fires since we got as far north as Broome, with 15 of them being at Cape York. Nothing is done about them. They just smoulder away on the side of the road, eventually burning themselves out. We frequently see smoke in the distance, and often have to drive through smoke too.
The flora here is just so different to down south, that I don't think the fires can get as big as we get them. Either that, or there are just so many of them, that the undergrowth literally never has a chance to get entrenched enough to make fires a danger.
They are often lit by local indigenous communities, or spread by the whistling kite bird, which is also known as a "fire hawk". They pick up burning embers and light new fires in order to flush out more insects and small prey for themselves.
I think we are actually at the stage now, where there is NO anxiety at the signs of smoke, which is really weird. We've become immune to it, which is probably a dangerous state of mind to be in, considering we will be heading south again soon...
No comments:
Post a Comment