On a block of private property in Tasmania’s south, a fire is burning.
The blaze at Oyster Cove, or putalina as this area was originally known, is being carefully monitored and tended to by a group of Tasmanian Aboriginal people, overseen by Victor Steffensen, who is a fire knowledge holder.
A small fire burns in undergrowth as part of Aboriginal cultural burning workshop held by Firesticks in Tasmania. (ABC News: Jordy Gregg)
Victor Steffensen ran the workshop. (Supplied: Firesticks)
The week’s worth of workshops is part of a program offered by Mr Steffensen’s group, Firesticks, a “national Indigenous network that empowers communities to protect and enhance country and wellbeing by reviving cultural knowledge practices”.
“I started to help people, go and visit their country to support them, a number of people got involved and we created Firesticks,” he said.
Firesticks also works with the government and to help the broader community connect with traditional fire knowledge.
People gathered at Oyster Cove as part of the Tasmanian workshop. (ABC News: Jordy Gregg)
The putalina fire is what is known as a “cool burn”, or “mosaic burn”.
Burning country this way gets rid of bushfire fuel, as well as rejuvenating the surrounding area for wildlife and people, allowing the space to be utilised again.
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Tasmanian pakana elder Jim Everett is no stranger to what country looks like when it is unwell.
“It’s a lot better than what it was in 1980 … I used to bring my kids down here to putalina, Oyster Cove, and the grass here would be three-feet high,” he said.
“Everything on this planet has a role to play in the relational ecosystems. The human role has always been to maintain the balance, so all life is able to live in the normal circumstances of forests being cared for.”
The group said Western burning practices, though “well-intentioned”, had “often contributed to further damage to the country by lighting hazard-reduction fires that are too hot, lit at the wrong time and in the wrong place”.
“For tens of thousands of years, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have managed country with fire, using fire sticks to light carefully timed burns in the right places to enhance the health of the land and its people.
“It may involve patch burning to create different fire intervals across the landscape or it could be used for fuel and hazard reduction.
“Fire may be used to gain better access to country, clean up important pathways, maintain cultural responsibilities and as part of cultural heritage management,” the group states on its website.
Roy Thomas is a fire practitioner and former Parks and Wildlife Tasmania firefighter. (ABC News: Jordy Gregg)
Two Tasmanian Aboriginal people have graduated as part of the Firesticks course.
Roy Thomas, a fire practitioner and former firefighter with Parks and Wildlife Tasmania, says a mistake humans make is “we think we’re more important than the bird that’s sitting up there on the tree, when we are not”.
“If everything around us is sick, we’re going to be sick.”
For Mr Steffensen, knowledge exists “in the landscape”, with much to offer.
“The elders have not passed. The land is an elder too.”
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