It’s early summer now in Australia, and the weather is still relatively cool. It’s a good time for the Parks and Wildlife services to do a hazard reduction burn, before the weather gets too extreme. They set fire to selected parts of the bush, after plenty of ground clearing and other preparatory work. On the day of the burn, the fire services are on hand to keep the fire within its boundaries. (This doesn’t always go according to plan, though!) The goal is to burn away undergrowth that could later result in a fierce, uncontrolled fire.

In the days since a recent burn in my area, I’ve noticed that a kookaburra often spends time in a particular area of the burned forest. Presumably there are small creatures around, even in the burned area, that offer a tempting snack.

This picture shows a kookaburra surveying the forest floor carefully. The blackened trunks and rocks are evidence of a burn that’s a few weeks old:

Here’s a closer view of the kookaburra:

The trees and many of the native plants survive fast-moving, relatively cool fires. Even the trees with blackened trunks are alive inside, and their leaves at the top of the canopy often remain green.

One plant that survives a fire amazingly well is the iconic grass tree (Xanthorrhoea). The trunk of a grass tree burns black, and sometimes all the spiky leaves are burned away. At other times, the leaves after a fire form a multi-coloured fan of green, orange, and brown.

The above grass tree is a few decades old. They grow very slowly, at the rate of 2 cm a year, and it can take about 20 years for them to form a trunk. Before that, they’re just a clump of spiky leaves sticking out of the ground.

Here’s a wider scene with a few small grass trees:

The next photo shows a bush area a couple of years after a burn. There’s plenty of regrowth happening:

And here’s a kookaburra under a bright blue sky, in a different area of Sydney:

I love walking in the post-fire forest in the early morning. Well, I love walking in any forest at any time, but after a fire there’s a surreal quality to the air. The Sydney Red Gums glow orange. Every sound is magnified, because there’s no muffling undergrowth. The rock formations show the structure of the land, usually hidden by plants. And bits of green start appearing almost immediately.

I hope you’ve enjoyed a stroll through some Ozzie bush, blackened but not daunted by hazard reduction burns.