As the southern hemisphere summer of 2021 draws to a close, Nance Haxton, in a podcast for the Griffith Review Backstory #3 Returning Fire to Australia’s Landscapes remembers the fires that ravaged Australia’s landscapes only a year ago, and explores ways we can live more harmoniously with this wide brown land. There’s no silver bullet to prevent fires of that magnitude from happening again, particularly in the face of climate change. But there is growing interest in the success and revival of traditional Indigenous fire practices to help ameliorate the looming threat.

From Australia’s wild savanna country in the top end, to Minjerribah [Stradbroke Island] in Queensland’s Moreton Bay and the remote Kimberley region of the continent’s north-west, Nance walks and talks with indigenous elders, indigenous rangers, fire ecologists and operations strategists – and the Indigenous Carbon Industry Network – to uncover the rich complexity of benefits that accrue when the fire practices of traditional owners, largely lost or ignored after white settlement, are returned. Among the interviewees is the ISFMI’s Prof. Jeremy Russell-Smith, speaking to Nance from Botswana about how the experience in Australia can also provide climate solutions in other parts of the world.

Interviews:

• Quandamooka Principal Ranger Jacob Martin

• Outgoing CEO of Quandamooka Yoolaburrabee Aboriginal Corporation [QYAC] Cameron Costello

• Chantelle Murray, Ranger coordinator for the Ngurrara Rangers at Fitzroy Crossing

• Pete O’Connor, Ranger coach with the Dambimangari Aboriginal Rangers in the Kimberley

• Strategic fire operations officer for the Kimberley Land Council Richard Whately

• Kristina Koenig, program manager for carbon and enterprise development at the Kimberley Lands Council

• The Indigenous Carbon Industry Network’s Anna Boustead

• Fire Ecology Professor Jeremy Russell-Smith from Charles Darwin University in Darwin

This audio Backstory forms an audio component of the Griffith Review’s Edition 71 ‘Remaking the Balance’.

Nance Haxton is a dual Walkley award winning journalist. Nance can be contacted through her website www.nancehaxton.com.au