With as much fanfare as perhaps the making of a cup of tea, Kulu buries some green foliage in the coals and instructs us to stand in the path of the thickening column of smoke, saying it will help rid us of any bad spirits.
"They would have been hunting, gathering, using fire for breaking up the area for them, maybe to set up a camp and probably smoking ceremonies. Rather than a crosshatch of small fire scars like those captured in the 1947 photographs, massive slabs of desert acacia and spinifex country burnt in scorchingly hot fires along with the animals that lived there.
"The rangers have spent quite a bit of time and effort doing ground burning and also getting in aircraft doing aerial burning."The work produced immediate results, with a virtual halt to the hot late-season fires that could burn across hundreds of kilometres. And that's when the old aerial photos were discovered to have captured the traditional burning practices when Karajarri people still lived in the desert, showing how much more work was needed.
"There is nowhere else in Australia or probably the world where we've got this first-hand look at what fire scars were like from this perspective, when traditional people were still living on country."
60k years of how to manage country well. More support needs to be put into re-gathering, sharing, and using that knowledge.
Take a leaf out of this one..
Some truly outstanding work being done on traditional land management.
Wow.
lesson should be learned from whoever are beating the drums of war