Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Our bushfire season

Strange as it may seem to some, danger time for bushfires in Queensland is from winter through to early spring. We have to be particularly aware in august when at the end of our usual dry winter we get strong gusty westerly winds. I'd noticed clouds of smoke to the West of Brisbane in recent weeks and on a visit last week to Brisbane forest park I came across a large burnt out area. You'll notice the bush is burnt out on both sides of the track, It reminds us how perilous our bushfires are and how easily we can be cut off.
Thankfully we are having welcome showers in Brisbane this week. We havn't had enough in our catchments unfortunately and we started on level 3 water restrictions this week which is buckets only. I heard on the radio today that it's already saving 50 million litres a day.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

It has also been extremely dry in Albuquerque, NM this year. We have had fires spring up all over the county.

David (Snappy) said...

We still have water shortages in England, esp the south.No bushfires thankfully.Australian plants though love bushfires to clear soil, and to help germinate seeds.Its very phoenix from the Ashes, and i think the Aboriginals used fire as well as a way of regenerating area's.Its dangerous though.Glad its rained a bit to quell them fires..

roybe said...

Drought seems to be affecting so many places. who would have thought the U.K. have water shortages. When I first came to Australia I used to tell people that the difference between an English winter and an English summer was the rain got warmer.

Kerri said...

I can smell that burnt area in my memory :) We used to get them in Frenchs Forest near Palm Beach, NSW, where I lived as a girl. Nasty things they are. But I've heard they're actually good for the forest...to promote new growth. Is that right?
I wish we could send you some of our overabundance of rain!

roybe said...

yes thats correct Kerri,quite a number of seed cones only release their seeds after bushfire. Sometimes it's amazing the regeneration you see, particularly if we get good spring rains.