Monadnocks National Park August 2010

Burning the Bibbulmun Track

Rosalie Schultz - August 2010

The Bibbulmun Track is WA's world famous long-distance walking track, extending almost 1000km from Kalamunda to Albany. The track is used by hundreds of thousands of walkers every year. Most walkers come from Perth, especially for shorter walks. However walkers come from interstate and overseas to walk the Bibbulmun.

My husband and I came from interstate, and we plan to walk the entire track. We started our trek in August 2010, when we walked the northern half of the track, from Kalamunda to Donnelly River Village.

The experience of walking daily for weeks on end is remarkable. It connects you in unique ways to the environment. External worries fade away, and your mind is focussed on features of the environment:  the forests, woodlands, rocky outcrops, and waterways; the cycles of the moon, the warmth of the days, the cold of the nights. The beauty of the environment is only enhanced as you spend longer and longer periods experiencing it, noticing more and more as you focus on subtle changes from day to day.

  

However for us, the sight of burnt and burning forests was also unforgettable. Our photos are both breath-taking and heart-wrenching.

The first we saw of burning was on 12thAugust. There was a note scrawled in black texta on a page of an exercise book at Canning campsite, just south of Brookton Hwy.It said that there were fires ahead, and we should go back to Brookton campsite. The sign had no date and because it was August and it was drizzling it seemed unlikely that there were fires. We decided that the sign must have been there since spring, and was no longer relevant. We didn’t want to have to backtrack and maybe end our walk, or by-pass an area and come back, so we walked on.

Then as we entered Monadnocks National Park on 13th August there was evidence of recent burning with fresh ash, then warmth, then small spot fires, then larger and closer fires as we walked along the track.

 

     

 

We got to the Monadnocks campsite and rested. The area around the camp was unburnt. Monadnocks campsite is near Mt Randall, where we did a short walk (maybe 500m) without our packs. All sides of Mt Randall were completely incinerated, with shrubs obliterated and remaining trees burnt up to the canopies. Even huge marri trees were burnt and some were still alight, with flames leaping out of trunks, which were like giant chimneys. The next day was a sorry walk, through burnt jarrah and the rare pink powderbark gum

  

We must have left the burnt area for a few days, but on 17th August we climbed Boonerring Hill, then went on to White Horse Hills, still in Monadnocks National Park. All incinerated, with the campsite looking like a forlorn tin shed surrounded by burnt stumps and leaves. The toilet stuck out a mile, rather than being discretely hidden in the bushes. The next day the trail seemed to disappear as fires had burnt over and around the trail, damaging the Waugal markers and obliterating signs of previous hikers.

 

Some other hikers were distressed by the burning, others by losing the trail in the burnt areas. Others accepted the burning, as per the propaganda cunningly placed in every hut, explaining the inevitability of burning in order to protect the forest. Surely if they are unable to control a prescribed burn in drizzling August conditions, this technique must be too difficult and dangerous, and alternative fire management is required - increased vigilance, safer usage.

I encourage everyone with concerns about WA's environment to explore the Bibbulmun. It would be great to see more people on the track as a reflection of their love of and concern for the environment. Currently Boddington Gold Mine sponsors the track and uses this to promote its extractive industry. It runs "Eyes on the Ground" program, which gets walkers to provide surveillance of trail conditions. Of course if your eyes are on the ground you don't look up and see (or hear, smell or think about) the Boddington Gold Mine, which you can see, hear and even smell for over a full day's walk.

 

Check out the website http://www.bibbulmuntrack.org.au/, decide how long you can go for (from three hours to three months), and get out there.