https://www.theage.com.au/national/nsw/ ... 84mSIuAVcU
Owners say the property was saved by the traditional Indigenous technique of cultural burning conducted on their land three years ago.
The only hut not protected by cultural burning, 500 metres from the main house, was destroyed in the blaze.
Unlike hazard reduction burning, cultural burns are cooler and slower moving, usually no taller than knee height, leaving tree canopies untouched and allowing animals to take refuge from the flames. Small fires are lit with matches, instead of drip torches, and burn in a circular pattern.
Mr Barber says the ancient practice is informed by thousands of years of traditional knowledge.
And here's the problem.A former park ranger with 15 years’ professional firefighting experience, Mr Barber says he had a “light bulb moment" at a cultural burning workshop with Indigenous elders in far north Queensland in 2010.
“Everything that I'd been doing as a professional firefighter, thinking that I was doing the right thing, was wrong, because I viewed fire in the landscape totally differently after that week,” he said.
Trained professionals in northern hemisphere methods are clearly smarter than a blackfella, why would they listen to 10's of thousands of years of accumulated knowledge?The Wiradjuri man started Koori Country Firesticks in 2016 to promote cultural burning as an alternative to hazard reduction techniques in NSW. The organisation has culturally burnt around 50 hectares of land across the Hunter Valley and Sydney, mainly on private properties at the request of owners.
But the 55-year-old has met plenty of resistance from governments, professional firefighters, national parks and even ecologists.
