The return of the right-way burn

00:00 James Ingram: (James first introduces himself in his native Wiradjuri language) So, my name is James Ingram. I'm from the Narrungdera Narrandera clan of the great nation of Wiradjuri.

00:19 Eliza Herbert: In 2021 Wiradjuri elder, Uncle James Ingram, and the Bush Heritage team walked across the rolling hills and woodlands of Tarcutta Hills Reserve for a cultural heritage survey. Little did they know they were headed towards a new era in collaborative land management for the reserve.

00:35 James Ingram: You've got your native grasses here and you’ve got your bush, small bush areas, and then we move more into the eucalyptus area down, down below. But the secret to a good landscape is to have, you know, an equal amount of all things set so that all the different types of biodiversity that live within those systems have got a place to flourish and all that sort of stuff.

01:03 Eliza Herbert: Tarcutta Hills sits amongst a highly fragmented landscape on Wiradjuri country in southern NSW. It features 738 hectares of largely intact grassy, white box woodlands which were once part of a network covering some 10 million hectares of Southeastern Australia. It was also the site of the first cultural burn on a Bush Heritage Reserve in NSW. This is Big Sky Country, a podcast by Bush Heritage Australia. I'm your host, Eliza Herbert, and today we are travelling to Wiradjuri Country to learn about right-way fire management or cultural burning.

01:49 James Ingram: I'm a senior Wiradjuri man. Now that responsibility of participating in the burn Is me lighting the first area for burn and then the rest of the team, a young team, all young keen fellows and keen girls who are involved in it. They just take over and it's a good thing to watch them how they go and they know where to go to light the next part so that they say burning burns, till it burns itself out.

02:21 Eliza Herbert: Uncle James is referring to the practice that has been repeated and passed down over thousands of generations by the oldest living culture on Earth. In August last year the Wiradjuri community were able to ignite the first cultural burn on Tarcutta Hills.

02:39 Dean Freeman: What we do with our fires when I do them, I'll pick an area that still has those containment lines, but we'll start on a high point. And we'll just put one dot on the ground. We'll just let that work as much as it can. But one of the main reasons, I suppose, is that if you're going to light an area around there, you'll have everything trapped.

02:58 Eliza Herbert: Dean Freeman is another Wiradjuri man who oversaw the burn and has been working with fire for two decades.

03:04 Dean Freeman: Once the fire starts, if you look at these trees, you're going to have every insect and bug that can't fly going up these trees. And that's the reason that we don't try to burn the canopy because that they're all heading into the canopy or up the trees to get away from the heat, I suppose, and the smoke. So, if you start stripping stuff like that, then you've got absolutely no chance at all to protect anything.

03:28 James Ingram: Got to have enough moisture in the soil and you could have enough moisture around the plants and that so that your fire doesn't catch and just escape into a huge, you know, ball of flames that's going to terrorize everybody and escape from you. That's the last thing we want. So getting those temperatures right and that's why there's always a discussion between myself and Dean and Dean's father and other elders about when is the right time to do it.

03:57 Eliza Herbert: This type of burning can also be a really valuable tool for managing invasive species. Lots of native flora has even evolved to benefit from or endure fire.

04:07 James Ingram: But you want to be able to target an area and take out the weeds that don't belong in our landscape and get rid of them and give the natives the chance to come back because the natives have been here forever and they need a chance to recover from all these introduced grasses that have taken over the place.

04:27 Eliza Herbert: When Uncle James Ingram was invited onto Tarcutta Hills to undertake a cultural heritage assessment, he identified several modified or scarred trees, artifacts and culturally significant meeting places. He saw the remnants of a rich ancestral history and a landscape in need of controlled fire. He immediately called for a cultural burn.

04:48 James Ingram: Well, I was pretty excited when we got invited by Bush Heritage to come out and do the culture heritage because we've been denied access to this land for a long, long time. 

04:57 Dean Freeman: So, we locate the scar trees, all the different foods and fibres and that sort of stuff there and then we'll put in mitigation methods for those. Some areas they're just too big when the big fires came through Canberra,  then you know, we knew where the sites were. So, we went out and did mitigation on those works and we saved all of those sites that were in the fire path, you know, and that's because of the work that we did in the previous years and in the lead up to that hot summer.

05:26 James Ingram: You've got to think about where ceremonial business took place. From here, it goes to Tumbarumba, before you have ceremonial rings, in Tumut, right. And then you’ve got more ceremonial rings in Gundagai.  On our way to Canberra for main business with the Gundungurra up in the Blue Mountains and the, you know, Gadigal mob and Tharawal mob. And then you've got the Black Duck people from down in Yuin nation, all meeting in Canberra.

05:57 Eliza Herbert: When Uncle James speaks, you can feel how important it is to spend time on country and have access to land so that cultural knowledge can be passed down to younger WIradjuri people.

06:08 James Ingram: This is part of the line of people, the walking tracks from down on the Murray right through to linking up with the mobs coming up from Leeton/ Narrandera/ Wagga and those areas and then you got the other mobs coming down from north, all meeting at Wagga ad then heading into Canberra where it all takes place.

06:27 Eliza Herbert: Vikki Parsley, Bush Heritage’s Aboriginal Partnership Manager for NSW, initiated these cultural heritage assessments with Uncle James.

06:35 Vikki Parsley: My name is Vicky Parsley. I'm the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Partnerships Manager NSW. I came out on site, had conversations with Uncle James. He had already conducted a cultural heritage survey here at Tarcutta Hills Reserve, where at the top of his list of recommendations, he had stated that he wanted to see a cultural burn take place here at Tarcutta Hills Reserve and the return of Wiradjuri people to country.

07:03 Eliza Herbert: If you're wondering what the difference is between a cultural burn and a hazard reduction burn. Vicky describes it best.

07:09 Vikki Parsley: A cultural burn requires traditional knowledge of our landscape, the plants, the animals, the systems in place, it's a much cooler, slower burn regime, so it's undertaken in smaller patterns which we refer to as a mosaic burning regime. They're done depending on different landscapes and country. There are indicators that often will reflect and tell people when it's time to actually burn on country. So, it was really important for us to be able to support Wiradjuri people in that conversation and for them to come in as part of our conservation and management processes at Tarcutta Hills. It was interesting because the first attempt, unfortunately, we weren't able to conduct a burn. The weather just wasn't in our favour. It was quite cold. We had a high rainfall at the time. A window then presented about a couple of weeks later.

08:11 James Ingram: How long ago did we give the burn, Dean?

08:13 Dean Freeman: Probably 3 months.

08:16 James Ingram: Yeah, I think 3 months. Well, this surprises me that all the natives have come back.

08:24 Dean Freeman: So Aboriginal people plan, execute and basically mop up on that fireground, you know, and that gives us a feeling and something that nothing else could basically give us. No amount of money or any other work type could give us that feeling of happiness, of joy, and actually contributing to traditional land management methods that we used, and our ancestors used for up to 60,000 years. You know you can't deny that sort of evidence and stuff that it's there.

08:56 Eliza Herbert: Australians are no strangers to fire, and the impact of appropriate fire management cannot be understated. In the summer of 2019 to 2020, fuel loads had built up throughout NSW after an extensive period of drought. And vast areas of forest burnt in the worst fire season ever recorded in the state. Over 20 million hectares burnt, 34 people lost their lives and it is estimated that 3 billion species perished.

09:22 James Ingram: The communities in the mountains were highly affected and all that sort of stuff. And you know, some places were burnt out completely and that's because a lot of people don't understand about fuel loads. If they knew more about how the bush can dump all this fuel load on the ground, and then it only takes one match to, you know, ignite it all.

09:47 Eliza Herbert: Across the Great Dividing Range and a few hours’ drive from Tarcutta, Vikki Parsley experienced the full force of the fires on Yuin country on the South Coast of NSW.

09:57 Vikki Parsley: We actually made the difficult decision to stay put, not to evacuate in the interest of, you know, helping look after some of our elderly neighbours. Just being a part of the community, we had those sort of relationships and when the fire came, for me personally as an Aboriginal woman from country and as a mother, the impacts came about at the time were a little bit surprising. I think the hardest part for me personally was watching my country burn, having connections and stories to country, understanding that, you know, there were certain places in the landscape where we had ancestors and there were certain beings that lived in those places as well. And previously I also had grown up with the grandfather on country who used to burn to the best of the family’s memories. Nobody's ever talked about scary stories of wildfires or having to be evacuated. And I actually have really fond childhood memories of sitting on the grass nearby and watching, you know, slow flames trickling up the hill in wet Sclerophyll forest on the South Coast near Narooma and watching my grandfather burn.

11:09 Eliza Herbert: In that same summer, it was the devastating Dunn’s Road fires that were too close to home for Uncle James, affecting a massive area not far from Tarcutta Hills.

11:18 James Ingram: And I think people if they look back on what happened with the Dunn’s Road fires, how destructive they were and you know we can't allow that system to happen. And this is where I think a bit of common sense has to prevail between, you know, the environmentalist, the conservationist. you know the Wiradjuri community and the general community as to how you look at your landscape and get it right, because those Dunn’s Road fires,  they caused a billion dollars worth of damage, quite easily, and nobody wants to see that happen because people died, houses got destroyed and communities got disrupted.

12:00 Eliza Herbert: Since those Black Summer fires, more landholders and organizations have seen the value of cultural burning to mitigate large scale bushfires, a story that's not unique to this continent. Vikki Parsley recently met with the people of the Yurok tribe on a trip to the United States in Northwest California, where they shared stories of cultural burning and its many benefits.

12:21 Vikki Parsley: It was really good to actually sit with women from the Yurok tribe, who specifically the Yurok tribe have these amazing strong women leaders who are out working with the community. They're using some of the similar techniques that we're using in Australia. They go in, they assess landscapes. They identify the cultural values that are important. 

12:49 Eliza Herbert: Healing happens in many ways through cultural burning. Not only is it a practice for traditional owners across the globe to reconnect a country and to heal country, it also provides opportunities for reconciliation. When we initially spoke about doing the cultural burn, I had spoken with Uncle James and he'd suggested we put a flyer out to community to gauge some interest and generate and get that information out into the community. The response at the time was quite surprising, not in terms of the Wiradjuri people, but there was a large interest from wider non-Aboriginal families. I was inundated with phone calls from people saying that they wanted to come with four carloads of families and children and it was at this time that I first met or spoke with George Maine on the phone.

13:40 George Maine: My name is George Maine, and I've always had an interest in the Tarcutta Hills Reserve. When I heard that Bush heritage had acquired it because of our family’s link to this area. So, it was my grandfather's grandfather, Thomas Hodges Mate, and his wife Maria, who were squatters here from the 1830s.

14:06 Vikki Parsley: George introduced himself and explained that his family were one of the first squatter family settler groups that had moved into this area. And what really interested and moved me at the time was George's description.

14:21 George Maine: When I heard that there was to be a cultural burn here and that Dean Freeman, who's a real leader in the Wiradjuri community and a friend of mine, when I heard that it was happening, I made contact with Dean to see if it would be OK for my mother and I to come along.

14:39 Win Maine: But it was just lovely to be out here and to have that contact with this beautiful area. And to think how it would have been all those years ago without people like us, with the Aboriginal people who lived out in these spots.

14:59 George Maine: Oh and I think really, it's just to express support to try and strengthen the arm of Dean and Vikki and the local Wiradjuri community as best we can.

15:09 Vikki Parsley: It was a really nice act of reconciliation. The way I look at it too, between, you know, a  former, one of the first family groups that had come here and for him to recognize that you know disconnection in the past of Wiradjuri people and wanting to be here and support understanding and respectfully asking that that was OK protocol and that he wasn't taking a place from another person in the community was a really nice act of, you know, honest, genuine wanting to connect with people and it was just such a nice opportunity we had to follow through.

15:48 Eliza Herbert: This was the first cultural burn at Tarcutta Hills, but it won't be the last. Bush Heritage is committed to sharing this journey with Wiradjuri people for years to come.

15:57 Vikki Parsley: I'd like to think that following Uncle James's recommendations and what he would like to see as an elder. I'd like to think that maybe this is a part of his legacy, is that we're doing the work that will enable his community and his people to continue to come back here, to always be able to access Tarcutta Hills Reserve in future and be a part of that conservation and management processes that we're already implementing and putting in place. Uncle James had indicated he would like to see that, you know, cultural burns continue into future generations. So, I'm taking it quite seriously that that's the foundation that I'd like to leave that Bush Heritage and have that set up so that, yeah, people can continue, and the next generations will hopefully be the next lot of rangers that can come in and work hand in hand with Bush Heritage staff and just obviously get some better outcomes long term as well, working towards our conservation goals.

16:54 James Ingram: We plan to be here for the next five years. That's my take on things and my take on  things is Bush Heritage are going to need a, you know, a workforce that can be called upon. And if Bush Heritage can help us achieve that goal by saying this is what's happened on our block. You know, we haven't suffered here from raging bushfires because we did our cultural burning.

17:20 Vikki Parsley: I think it's just really important for people to understand that we're going into a really interesting time. As I mentioned, on a global kind of scale, these conversations are very broad at the moment and there seems to be more interest around the world for people to look towards indigenous knowledge systems for answers. And I'm not saying that necessarily all the answers are there, but it's certainly information that we can share willingly that will benefit everybody in the long run. And for me personally, my culture and my people are the reason why I'm here. That's been my drive and my passion to work in conservation and heritage professionally. So, I'd like to see more of that outcome in the long run and just that people, I think more people will benefit.

18:08 Eliza Herbert: This benefit is definitely felt on the ground when Wiradjuri people are burning country the right way.

18:14 James Ingram: And our people, I mean, they're proud to get up at, you know, early in the morning and come to work, especially when you're working in an environment like this. This is a great office. I'm telling you, you know, but look at these beautiful hills and everything. The birds are singing. Birds are flying. There are wallabies, kangaroos and everything in here and some beautiful butterflies and birds, the whole lot. So, it's a nice block and I look forward to working with Bush Heritage over the next five years.

18:44 Dean Freeman: You needed a band of experienced men and women.

18:45 James Ingram: With people who are willing to learn, you know, because our aim is to put people back in touch with fire and what it can do for you.

19:01 Eliza Herbert: Bush Heritage Australia is a leading not for profit conservation organization, protecting ecosystems and wildlife across the continent, we acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the lands on which these episodes were recorded and on which we live, work and play, and extend our deepest respects to elders, past and present. The Bush Heritage 2030 strategy includes a goal to deepen and expand the Aboriginal partnerships program to achieve meaningful conservation outcomes. It's all part of a right-way approach. To learn more about our work or find out how you can donate, head to the link in the show notes. Special thanks to Uncle James Ingram, Vikki Parsley, Dean Freeman and George and Win Maine and Kelly Price, Tarcutta's Reserve Manager for sharing their time with us. This episode was produced by Will Sacre and myself, Eliza Herbert. Their music is “Invertebrate City” by the Orbweavers and this episode was mixed and mastered by Mitch Ansell.