Fremantlebiz - Paul's Letter from Australia

A Wireless Hill revisit

The state Labor government's daylight saving experiment was switched off as of last night, so for the next few days a lot of us ordinary Western Australians will be suffering a form of jet lag.

There was a short item in the local news yesterday that the police have caught an alleged firebug - a man in his forties who used a bicycle to maintain his pyromaniac mobility. There has been no mention that he was connected with the two bushfires this week in Wireless Hill.

Yesterday my wife and I called in to the scene of Friday's fire. It was on the eastern side of the hill, adjacent to a grassed picnic area. Maybe about three or four hectares of bushland had been burnt out. Not a lot as far as bushfires go. It could have been worse.

The newly burnt area was no where near as steep as the northern side of the hill which came under the attack of a firebug on Wednesday. We were again disappointed to discover that a lot of damage had again been inflicted on the fragile environment by vehicles of Fire and Emergency Services Authority (FESA) forfeiting crews.

This damage prompted another series of photos. It can be seen from the disturbance of the ash layer that quite a few of the wheel tracks occurred after the fire had passed. It seems possible some of the firefighters were welded to their seats on Friday. A case of why walk when you can ride. The fire area was relatively small.

I've learned that a gung-ho cowboy attitude exists amongst some FESA people and there can be a degree of communicative arrogance with lessor mortals such as park rangers about priorities and strategies. FESA tend to argue that protection of property is their main priority - doing whatever it takes, even if it means going in like a bull in a china shop at the natural environment. I suspect it's a cultural thing. I've met a few firefighters in my time.

Apparently a lot of people have been upset over what has happened at Wireless Hill this week. I've heard that a meeting of all the stakeholders is being organised.

While we were there yesterday a very flash looking FESA car fitted atop with every type of flashing light possible cruised slowly past on the picnic area roadway. It was some bigwig apparently doing a post-fire inspection tour. Unlike us, he didn't bother to leave his vehicle.

So anyway, today I've put another series of images up in a new file on my Picasa site. As with the other three folders of images related to Wireless Hill this week, I think most of them speak for themselves.

I'm also trying out a new bit of HTML code related to the new file, which is on the next line. The code is invisible to the reader, but not the effect:

Wireless Hill - fire aftermath 29 March 2008

© MMVIII Paul R. Weaver.

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Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

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Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!