Don’t mollycoddle the boy

IT’S THAT TIME of year when volunteer fire-fighting brigades earn a few bucks doing burn-offs for locals. In the old days, even into the 1980s, landowners would do this themselves. I used to light up the roadside verge of our small rural property in northern Victoria, chasing the flames down the fence line with a damp hessian sack.

Back then I was actually being