Bush fires - aftermath

I recently joined my parents up at their block of land, north of Buxton and Marysville. The landscape is pretty bleak, after the fires went through. The trees that were not burnt all the way up (leaves still there) all have scorched brown leaves. On the drive up we passed burned out buildings at the side of the road. Not much was left.

However by the time I went up, a couple of weeks after the fires, grass had started to grow on the open ground. A few trees had tiny green sprouts on them, high on the trunks, where new growth had started. And my parents dam has tiny frogs living in it. So the ash washing into the water hasn't killed all of the life. In a few years it will be green and lush again.

My parents were very lucky, they didn't lose the shed they had up on the block, with all of their stored stuff. This is partly because they put a lot of work into ember proofing the shed, with shutters over the windows and steel wool stuffed into all the gaps, but other people had the same precautions and still lost everything. So good management was involved, but so was a lot of luck.

Almost everything outside the shed burned though. It is a bit surreal seeing coils of wire, where the insulation has burnt off. The tires on the trailer were steel belted radials. The "steel belts" are still there but the rubber has gone. Lots of stuff like that.

I spent the day helping mum and dad to pile branches from fallen trees into piles, so they can be burnt in winter. Keeping dead wood from buiding up is a constant task up there, and may be part of why the fire didn't "crown" (burn up to the tree tops) over my parents land.

It was a fairly sobering day, but the signs of new life are encouraging.