The Australian - Fires This Summer "An Uncontrollable Monster"

[hatrack]

THIS summer, Australia feels like a war zone. Cities and towns across the country are enveloped in a perpetual smoke haze, and the braying of fire sirens is as commonplace as birdsong. Every evening television commentators deliver grim-faced reports from the front lines.

Tired farmers look dazedly into the camera. Firemen with soot-smeared clothes and chilli-red eyes shake their heads and mumble that they have never known anything like it. As with every modern war report, helicopters make a ubiquitous backdrop. They dip down in front of shrinking reservoirs, then stagger towards the fire front, their water pouches swaying marsupial-like underneath their bellies.

"Why? Why, Kamarrang?" asks a tall, slightly stooped Aboriginal man from western Arnhem Land in the far north of Australia. He is Bardayal Nadjamerrek, an elder of the Mok clan, and he is talking to a grizzled white fellah named Peter Cook, an ecological scientist. They are discussing the disappearance of whole groups of animals from the plateau of Nadjamerrek's youth. He repeats the question, this time looking upward to address the Old People - his ever-present ancestors - with whom he habitually discusses such issues.

This scene opens a nearly completed film, Fire in the Land of Honey, of which I'm a producer. The work of filmmaker Kim McKenzie, it is one of a trilogy of documentaries about Nadjamerrek and his native land, which his people call Ankung Djang. Collectively, the films will tell how 50 years ago the Aboriginal people left this vast plateau, the size of Belgium, drawn by the lure of money, tobacco and other novelties offered by distant buffalo camps, mines, stock stations and missions ... Since his people left half a century ago, fire - a staple tool of Aboriginal life - has turned into an uncontrollable monster, careering across the landscape, devouring the plateaus trees, plants, birds, animals and insects.

EDIT

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21323526-7583,00.html

[Dead_Parrot]

1. Provokes an interesting question...

...when they were taking stock of their water supplies with an eye to rationing, recycling and desalination, did they allow for scooping shitloads out of the reservoirs for firefighting?

[phantom power]

2. do you hate Australia's freedom?

[Dead_Parrot]

3. No, just the beer and soap-operas.

:evilfrown:

Oh, and the cricket team, but only sometimes. :)

[XemaSab]

4. Well that's the solution right there:

make brewing undrinkable beer a felony.

That'll solve the water shortage. :P

[depakid]

5. "Oh, and the cricket team..."

What, you weren't chuffed about the Ashes?

(Sorry- couldn't help myself -couldn't hold back the pun).

Curiously, a close friend in Newcastle, NSW has been reporting that the weather and rainfall on her section of the coast has been within normal ranges- but up the Hunter Valley, things have been much different.

One of the solutions:

Dam to 'drought-proof' Newcastle, coast

A $342 million dam to be built in the Hunter Valley will drought-proof Newcastle and the Central Coast for the next 60 years, NSW Premier Morris Iemma says. The construction of the 450 billion litre dam - the centrepiece of a new water grid for the region - ensured the area's water "crisis" would never happen again.

"This (dam) will not only secure supply for Hunter families, but will ensure that the crisis which exists on the Central Coast will not happen again," Mr Iemma told reporters in Sydney.

"With the most severe drought in living memory and the impact of climate change, this water grid will sustain the communities of the Central Coast and the Hunter for the next 60 years and beyond."

The dam is the first major water storage project to be built in the Hunter-Greater Sydney region for 30 years and will double the Hunter Valley's current water holding capacity.

Mr Iemma said with the Central Coast's dams presently only 15 per cent full, an urgent solution was required.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/National/Dam-to-droughtproof-Newcastle-coast/2006/11/13/1163266448632.html