{"id":1194,"date":"2020-01-05T05:29:21","date_gmt":"2020-01-04T18:29:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.realclimaterecords.com.au\/?p=1194"},"modified":"2020-01-05T05:29:21","modified_gmt":"2020-01-04T18:29:21","slug":"burn-or-be-burned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.realclimaterecords.com.au\/?p=1194","title":{"rendered":"Burn or be Burned"},"content":{"rendered":"

https:\/\/www.dailytelegraph.com.au\/blogs\/tim-blair\/burn-or-be-burned\/news-story\/55748272854d51bffe81cfe4ee890ee9<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

By modern standards, my grandfather would probably be considered an environmental criminal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

To clear land for his farmhouse, milking sheds, pig pens, chicken sheds, blacksmith shop and other out buildings, he cleared hundreds of trees.<\/p>\n

And he cleared thousands more for his wheat fields, cattle paddocks and shearing sheds. Old man Hobbs would probably be found guilty of cultural appropriation, too, because he used the Aboriginal method<\/a> of land clearing.<\/p>\n

He burned all of those trees.<\/p>\n

He also burned trees and established dirt roads through surrounding bushland. Every year he\u2019d burn any long grass alongside the local roads, to make those roads more effective as firebreaks.<\/p>\n

Yesterday I asked my mother if her father followed any particular schedule for his burning. \u201cWhenever he had spare time,\u201d she answered.<\/p>\n

What did the local fire brigade captain think about all of this? Not a problem. My grandfather was<\/em> the local fire brigade captain.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s say my grandfather torched 3000 trees, which is likely a very low estimate. At current rates<\/a>, that would have resulted in a fine of more than $1.5 million. That\u2019s the modern penalty for reducing fuel loads<\/a> and such.<\/p>\n

He was obsessive about protecting his family, farm animals and property from the risk of fire. Some were not as vigilant.<\/p>\n

My mother, now in her 80s, recalls an occasion when her father loaded the entire family into the car and drove for 40 minutes or so to a nearby small town. The children assumed this was their destination, but their father kept on driving.<\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t speak much during that drive, until eventually he slowed as the vehicle approached an incinerated farm. Sheep and cattle lay burned and dead in the fields. The farm house was a charred ruin.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis,\u201d my grandfather said, \u201cis what happens if you don\u2019t prepare for fire.\u201d<\/p>\n

He stayed there for a good long while, sufficient for the children to fully absorb his message. One of those children later took over as the local fire captain and continued his father\u2019s preventive burning.<\/p>\n

Close to 100 years after he built it, my grandfather\u2019s farm house is still standing. Fire has never touched it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

https:\/\/www.dailytelegraph.com.au\/blogs\/tim-blair\/burn-or-be-burned\/news-story\/55748272854d51bffe81cfe4ee890ee9 By modern standards, my grandfather would probably be considered an environmental criminal. To clear land for his farmhouse, milking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[193,41,384,48,742,1051,183,258,1052,372,262],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realclimaterecords.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1194"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realclimaterecords.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realclimaterecords.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realclimaterecords.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realclimaterecords.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1194"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.realclimaterecords.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1195,"href":"http:\/\/www.realclimaterecords.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1194\/revisions\/1195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realclimaterecords.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realclimaterecords.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realclimaterecords.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}