Cultural Burn at Birkenburn

Tom and Martina Shelley from Birkenburn Farm near Bungendore hosted a cultural burning workshop with Cultural Fire practitioner Den Barber during July, as part of their ongoing commitment to environmental projects that includes large-scale tree-planting, creating wildlife corridors and controlling erosion.

After last summer’s catastrophic fires, Martina and her family had been concerned about large fuel loads on the hills. They engaged Den to help them learn how to safely use fire as a tool to manage this risk and decided to hold workshops to further share the knowledge and help build cultural connections and heal the land. 

The project with Den and Koori Country Firesticks is supported by the Foundation for National Parks & Wildlife through their Bushfire Recovery Small Grants fund for specific bushfire response projects. It aims to regenerate and maintain biodiverse habitat on the property and protect it from wildfire, while encouraging and enabling surrounding landholders and community to do the same. It is hoped the series of workshops will increase knowledge of cultural burning practices and give participants the confidence to adopt cultural burning on their own land. 

The day started with Den and his team from Koori Country Firesticks Aboriginal Corporation and Yarrabin Cultural Connectionsguiding nearly 50 participants from the paddocks, high up into the hills, where the Great Dividing Range separates the Murray–Darling Basin and the Shoalhaven catchment. A special cleansing smoking ceremony was held, bringing a reverence and cultural immersion to the experience.

Being mindful of conditions is an important part of planning cultural burns especially with the workshop site having had an absence of fire on the land for 50 years, so it was ideal the day was cool and damp with little or no wind. It is also advisable not to plan burns when plants are fruiting or young animals are around.

The aim of the day was to clean the land of the dead logs, branches and leaf litter that makes country ‘messy’. When traditional Aboriginal people still lived on the land they were always collecting fallen wood and logs for their fires and managing the fuel load, but in their absence this continues to build up. Not all fallen logs need to be burned however, some can be saved and placed on contours to slow water down across the landscape and keep moisture and nutrients in the land.

At the top of the range, the team used a traditional method of lighting fire, with a team of four sharing the task of spinning a grass tree flower stalk (Xanthorrhoea) on a softer base of native hibiscus or cottonwood (Hibiscus tiliaceus). Once the spark was ignited it was transferred to a bed of stringy bark tinder where it was blown on gently until a flame emerged. Traditionally, this fire would then be carried between campsites within a banksia cone.

Rather than using a drip torch that creates a hot wall of fire, cultural burn fires are lit in ‘spots’ that radiate out in small circles, leaving a patchwork pattern of burnt and unburnt areas where animals and insects can retreat to as fire approaches. Similarly, keeping fire out of the canopy by clearing branches and leaves from around the base of trees is vital for protecting another refuge place for creatures seeking safety.

Unlike wildfires which wipe out everything down to the dirt, damp leaves usually still remain after a cool cultural burn which helps keep moisture in the ground. Interestingly grass, even when green, will burn much faster than damp leaves. Rocky areas and damp sections also provide natural containment areas for fires, highlighting the importance of rehydrating landscapes to improve resilience to fire and influencing where it will burn. Traditionally, waterway drainage areas were considered so important they were designated as ‘no burn’ areas. 

Participants divided into groups and lit small areas in a mosaic pattern, watching as the fire slowly burnt litter and basket grass (Lomandra longifolia) in circles, going out as they reached one another or hit a damp spot. The cool burn was slow, leaving behind a carbon layer and not damaging soil life. As the small fires burned, Den sang to the land in a spine-tingling, booming voice.

Researchers from The Mulloon Institute will continue to monitor the burn site over time and study the effects it has on soils and vegetation, including measuring how fire impacts the movement of water in the landscape, and how water in a rehydrated landscape can impact the movement of fire.

Thank-you to Den Barber and his team from Koori Country Firesticks and Yarrabin Cultural Connections for sharing their valuable cultural knowledge via these workshops, and to Tom and Martina Shelley for giving so many of us this space and opportunity to learn in. A further workshop is planned for 12-13 September 2020.