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Edwin David: Oh, we used to burn it in the winter, in the dry season, first winter [early dry
season]. So that new grass to shoot up. We used to get a lot of cattle there.
Marcus Barber: Did they burn everything on that country, or just bits and pieces?
Edwin David: Just bits and pieces.
David Hughes describes the need to keep the fires patchy by burning the ridges one year
and the watercourses the next, but he also describes additional effects of fire on eucalyptus,
and how fire regimes need to take account of where the water is:
One of the management practices we used was early burning, and that has two effects, it
gives you a good firebreak for later in the year, and it also brings your cattle together. And if
you do that properly, you get carryover grass, that‟s what you‟ve got to manage. And one
year you might go through and burn all your watercourses and leave your ridges. And the
next year you‟ve got old grass on your ridges, so you go through and burn the ridges and
leave the watercourses. It‟s a very important part of the management of that country. And
the other thing it does, and not many people are aware, but if you‟ve got a lot of eucalyptus
leaves, they are not very palatable to cattle, but if you get a cold fire through, it sucks the
sap back out of your leaves, and they‟ll eventually fall on the ground and they can eat them
then. It‟s like putting them in an oven you know, like cooking them. If you burn it early, and
you get those green shoots coming through. That green shoot, if you do it right and stock it
right, that will take you through to about October. And then when October comes, a lot of
your waters are drying up now, getting dirty, and that grass has gone off so the cattle will
come back onto the main waters, and if you‟ve taken them out there with a burn, they‟ve
still got lots of soft grass on the good waters.
David Hughes
The cattlemen tried to ensure the lighting of fires in the late wet and early dry, and that those
fires took account of available water. In a longer excerpt below from a conversation about
fires, Philip Yam described the specific characteristics of the Oriners landscape, and how
great care needed to be taken with managing fires in the area. This was so as not to
inconvenience neighbours and/or start fires at inappropriate times and places that would then
get out of control:
Marcus Barber: When you were camping up there, did you do that burning after the wet
season? Did you light the place up in different areas?
Philip Yam: We used to only do around the homestead. [We] don‟t bother somewhere else,
because you‟ll only cause a problem, other people don‟t like it. Because when the fire
spreads, bushfire, there is no way you can stop him.
Marcus Barber: So even though it was early in the year there and it was still green, you
were still worrying about the neighbours?
Philip Yam: Yeah, see you got a lot of that different grass up there, only just a cigarette butt
can just light that up. You got that other little small grass. Cause when that, [when] you
drop a match on that, you won‟t stop him. It burns easy. And you can‟t stop it because that
country got wind every time, every day is blowing. Some big wind you get up there, and
then you can‟t stop it when the wind is blowing. You got to be very careful what time to
burn. Maybe early hours of the morning or late, maybe in the night. Wait until the wind is
easing off a bit. But you got to be very careful, [because] if that wind pick up again it will go;
the whole grass, the whole country will go up. So that‟s what happened a few times up
there. We get pig shooters coming in early in the year, and they can‟t get pigs, so they light
up some places, and then we get the blame for it, from the neighbours. They say „oh, the
Oriners mob probably dropped that match!‟
Marcus Barber: Blame from whom? Koolatah and Drumduff people?
Working Knowledge at Oriners Station, Cape York
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