Controlling the burn

The horrific fire season we endured last spring and summer has changed forever the way we relate to our gardens and landscape. A friend even said the Blue Mountains blaze that burned her garden and almost claimed her house and street now makes her look at native vegetation with a fear from which she may never recover.

Innocence was also shattered in the NSW Northern Rivers where I live. We’ve always been less concerned about bushfires because of the belief that rainforests don’t burn.

All that changed last summer when iconic rainforest in the Nightcap National Park burned as a result of lightning strike. It wasn’t a raging canopy fire as in a eucalyptus forest but a smouldering fire that crawled