Fwd: fire the changes

Anne Martis (The West, Letters 21 Dec) seems to be suggesting that we should regularly burn off bush, as indigenous people have for 60,000 years. There's a serious modern problem with that approach.

Stone-age Australians would burn bush for several reasons, including sanitation. The fire would go through the "camp site" area and clear it of rubbish. The tribe would then move on to a new site.

Now we build houses in "pleasant bushland surroundings". When the bush burns, we expect efforts to be made to protect our houses. After the fires we want to move back into the same houses.

Worse than that, we cannot have controlled burns because there are houses scattered throughout the bush. We want our country lifestyle, we also want protection from the country itself. Moving to a fresh campsite is no longer acceptable. Stone-age methods no longer work.