Sharing Cultural Burning
A landholder view gained by working with Githabul Cultural Burning practitioners
Capacity building - LEP_23_033_UCCL_11 2025 1
The issue
As long-term landholders in the Githabul Nation area, relationships have grown with the Githabul peoples over time’ and being active in Landcare for a number of decades we had been involved in a number of bush regeneration and weed control projects in partnership.
In conversations over the issue of appropriate burning regimes arose. It was agreed that the goal of controlled fire should be a patchwork of burnt areas with different fire free intervals to support biodiversity.
Purchased in 1991 our property had been historically burnt on a yearly basis with minimal consideration of biodiversity.
We adjoin two World Heritage National Parks, and we have very diverse vegetation types and we consider this regime inappropriate,
A number of unplanned fires have entered under our ownership, but generally speaking we believed the bush should be left to recover from almost 100 years of previous poor management.
We needed a long-term burning strategy based around the landscape and vegetation diversity but we lacked the resources to undertake the tasks.
The solution
We had become increasingly aware of Aboriginal cultural practices, and when the local Githabul asked if they could undertake some burns on our property, we jumped at the learning opportunity, although no cultural burning had occurred in our area, and we were aware of the potential issues and liabilities arising from current bushfire legislation and the potential ramifications if anything went wrong.
This was discussed, and we decided to proceed. As landholders then essentially turned the entire project workplan over to the fire practitioners.
The impact
Considerable pre burn works were undertaken. This included Lantana control, upgrading and construction of access trails; and fire breaks using a traxcavator, hand tools, and our tractor. Lantana and weed control were undertaken using backpack manual sprayers as well as a Quik Spray unit.
With a break in the weather only a week before a bushfire permit would be necessary, everything was checked again.
The team had a list of phone numbers to contact all neighbours and government agencies in order to provide the necessary 24hrs notice. Written notification including a smoke warning; contact details and phone numbers was also delivered to letterboxes.
It was easy to see the increasing enthusiasm of the team build as they got closer to undertaking a cultural activity that many had not previously participated in.
Five vehicles and around 16 people worked seamlessly, supported by two-way communication between workers and Elders at all times. The heat of the fire, was under control at all times, not an easy task, particularly in places of dense blady grass. No fences were damaged and fire was excluded from riparian areas; trees we had planted were not burnt. Scorching of trees and shrubs was extremely minimal. At the end of the day the site was checked to ensure all flame was blacked out.