Forestry

Living with fire in the Adelaide Hills

3 July 2026 / 4 Comments

A history of burning, management and the illusion of control

Spending time at Cudlee Creek in the Adelaide Hills over Christmas and New Year at the end of last year and beginning of this year, it’s impossible not to see the landscape through the lens of fire. The orchards, vineyards and tourist towns are real enough, but they sit lightly on a deeper, more enduring reality that the Adelaide Hills have always been a fire-prone landscape.

The swift parrot and the convenient scapegoat

5 June 2026 / 4 Comments

Few species in Australia have been so effectively weaponised in public debate as the swift parrot. A small, fast-flying migratory bird that once moved in flocks of hundreds across the forests of eastern Tasmania has, in recent decades, been recast as more than just a species in trouble. It has become a symbol, a banner, and, most conveniently of all, a scapegoat.

A forest that grew because people came

1 May 2026 / 19 Comments

This will be seen as one of the great books about Australia. Eric Rolls gives the history of the forest the laconic power of an extended campfire yarn, spiced with the personal vision that comes from a lifetime of acute observation.

Historian Professor Weston Bate, on A Million Wild Acres.

Australia’s greatest biological control story

3 April 2026 / 17 Comments

When Australians today drive through the rich farming country of the Western Downs, it is nearly impossible to picture the landscape as it was a hundred years ago, when it was covered by a living, spiny mass. From the horizon in every direction, vast plains of prickly pear stretched like a green-grey ocean, consuming homesteads, fences, paddocks, creeks and entire townships.

The koala conundrum: saving Australia’s most profitable species

6 March 2026 / 9 Comments

Australia’s koala has become more than just a marsupial. It’s now a symbol, a fundraising tool and a political icon. Smile for photos, showcase their faces on postcards and talk about imminent extinction, and suddenly, money starts flowing. Politicians, environmentalists and the media all love it. Yet, like all great myths, the story of the koala’s supposed doom is more a crafted tale than a real ecological threat.

The forgotten inferno: Victoria’s Great Fires of 1926 and the lessons that shaped a nation

6 February 2026 / 4 Comments

The bushfires that swept across Victoria in 1926, a hundred years ago, are not as ingrained in Australian folklore as Black Friday in 1939 or Black Saturday in 2009. There are no monuments, no school references and no shorthand name etched into the national psyche. One reason is that there was no royal commission or formal inquiry to investigate what went wrong and how to prevent it from happening again.

A case study in folly #7: an avoidable inferno – the 2015 Wye River fire

2 January 2026 / 4 Comments

How many disasters must we have, and how much public and private money needs to be spent, before we stop accepting a situation that can and should be avoided?

Professor Mark Adams, landowner at Separation Creek

Introduction

Christmas should be a time of family, rest, and renewal. For the small coastal communities of Wye River and Separation Creek on Victoria’s Great Ocean Road, Christmas Day 2015 brought devastation instead.

A case study in folly #6 – the day the sun never rose at Mallacoota

5 December 2025 / 8 Comments

What has happened in the last few days is the consequence of years of neglect of the bushfire threat in the national park, which in this area is tantamount to malpractice by fire agencies and the land manager.

– Denis O’Bryan on the Mallacoota fire.

On New Year’s Eve 2019, Mallacoota was engulfed in a strange, frightening darkness.

Kosciuszko’s managed decline: how politics and bad science burned the high country

7 November 2025 / 7 Comments

“When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a king. The place becomes a circus.”

Old Turkish Proverb

Settlement, snow leases and the rise of the grazing scapegoat

By the 1830s, white settlers from the Monaro, Canberra, and Goulburn districts were driving cattle into the Snowy Mountains each summer.

The Swan River mahogany paves an empire

3 October 2025 / 6 Comments

For centuries, timber has been the backbone of human progress, building homes, fuelling fires, and shaping cities. Few of its many applications are as overlooked yet profound as the humble wooden paver. These blocks of timber, placed beneath the wheels of horse-drawn carriages and later automobiles, not only quieted the clamorous streets of bustling cities but also symbolised a harmonious partnership between nature’s bounty and human ingenuity.