A few of us in the Highways and Byways community have lately found ourselves all reading the same book! And it’s being passed around to family and friends across the generations. What a great read!
Victor Steffensen’s Fire Country – How Indigenous Fire Management could help save Australia has a beautiful story-telling flow to it. This book is a journey with Victor as he learns from elders and travels across the country demonstrating sophisticated and complex cultural knowledge of fire management. There are powerful lessons on cultural burning practices on just about every page woven amongst yarns and stories.
Dale and Lewis Musgrave taking over from their grandfathers – George Musgrave and Tommy George who imparted their knowledge to Victor Steffensen over many years. Image from Fire Country.
After the horrific summer we’ve experienced in Australia is there not a more relevant time to expand our knowledge and listen to the wisdom of thousands of years?
In this current year, when the Highways and Byways grants theme is Nourishing our Land and Our Communities, we are keen to support initiatives in this arena. Earlier this year a LandCare group from Queensland approached us to apply for a grant to demonstrate cultural burning practices. A number of property owners in the local area had expressed keenness to learn. We were not able to fund the program this year due to Covid 19 restrictions, but are very keen to do so in 2021.
Congrats to Hardie Grant on publishing this terrific and important book. Buy a copy and you’re also supporting Firesticks – an Indigenous led network to look after country.