Real Climate Records

In this week’s enlarged issue, we present for the consideration of our readers a great deal of matter dealing with bushfire control. The articles are contributed by experts and gleaned from authoritative sources, and we hope that they will receive the attention they deserve, and will play some part in reducing the fire-menace during the dangerous summer ahead.

The information given is, we think, of a practical kind, and to follow it will not impose undue labour on anyone.

The dry winter just ending makes additional caution necessary in order to preserve vitally important feed for stock, and it will be found that to ensure safety, a great deal of co-operation has been arranged, between the Forestry Department, the local governing bodies, and the people in every community.

Ever since the first settlers began to cultivate Australian soil, the bushfire has been one of the greatest obstacles to prosperity and safety which farmers have had to face, and when the flames actually begin to sweep across the country, the conduct of rural-dwellers has always been exemplary.

It is almost impossible for a writer of Australian fiction to complete a novel of life in the bush without introducing such a catastrophe, in order to show how, when danger threatens, personal enmities are forgotten, and the whole district comes together, to toil shoulder to shoulder to save what they can.

Men who have not been “on speaking terms” for years, discover each other’s qualities in such a crisis, in fact as well as in fiction, but, of course, co-operation to prevent the danger is much better than organisation to conquer it.

In the old days, the revengeful swagman, the piece of glass left in the bush to magnify the sun’s rays and ignite dry grass, and all sorts of other such influences, generally received the blame for starting fires. Perhaps they sometimes do so, but in an overwhelming majority of cases, a blaze results from sheer carelessness on the part of someone, and this is what the Forestry Department, with the aid of the Road Boards and Municipalities, aims to overcome. Fire Control Officers and Volunteer Bush Fire Brigades have been formed all over rural Western Australia, but, as Mr. J. Giblett says in his article on the subject, it is to be hoped that they will have nothing to do.

From the above, and from the pertinent matter in other parts of this issue, the reader should gain some appreciation of the extent to which the authorities in Western Australia have succeeded in organising bush communities for the prevention of fire.

That they have done fine work no one can doubt, but all their efforts can be rendered useless by the obstinacy, carelessness or foolishness of one man in any district. Should such a person’s lapse not be traced to him, he may avoid the severe penalties rightly provided for in the Bush Fires Act, but he will surely suffer some feeling of shame when he surveys the devastation caused by his act.

In such a case, anyone who is aware of the identity of such an offender should have no hesitation in reporting him to the authorities, for such a crime against all his neighbours is in quite a different category to any action following a dispute between individuals, in which there might be something to be said for each party.

Most important of all resolutions which can be made at the beginning of summer by any rural resident, how ever, is one to take every possible precaution to avoid offending himself.

A study of the Bush Fires Act, and a determination to do all that it requires, does not cost much, either in time or money, and may save a great deal of both, and even life itself.