NSW trials cultural burning program to keep roads open during emergencies like Black Summer

Walbunja Rangers project coordinator Andrew White performs a South Coast cultural burn. (ABC South East NSW: Fatima Olumee)

When the 2019-2020 Black Summer bushfires tore through towns along New South Wales’ South Coast, Jan Main wondered if Batemans Bay had been left to burn.

Residents with infant children and pets were arriving on the doorstep of the Batemans Bay hotel where Ms Main was assistant manager, desperate for help.

The Kings Highway connecting Batemans Bay to Canberra had been closed for several weeks and supermarket shelves were bare.

The queue for petrol stretched for kilometres down the Princes Highway, which was sporadically blocked to the north and the south.

“One of the hardest things was not knowing when the food is going to come, if the petrol is going to come,” Ms Main said.

She packed her car full with belongings on three different occasions to prepare to evacuate.

The only place Ms Main could go was to the beach.

“When it became apparent that north and south were blocked as well and we were locked in here — and that is what it felt like, locked in — then you begin to feel isolated, and I felt, ‘Does anyone know that the South Coast is burning? Is anyone going to come and help us?’,” she said.

There were more than 400 people stranded at Ms Main’s hotel.

There was limited food, no electricity, no health products, no nappies.

The day after the fires tore through, many guests rushed to leave.

“I said, ‘Where are you going to go? You can’t get to Sydney. You can’t go to Canberra. You cannot go south. You can’t go anywhere. You’re stuck here’,” Ms Main said.

Building resilient roads

The NSW government has announced a two-year pilot program designed to keep key regional roads open during future emergencies.

The $4.5 million Aboriginal Cultural Landscapes Project will see traditional owners using land management methods, such as slow cultural burns, to control roadside strips of native title-owned land.

The trial sites will be alongside the Bruxner Highway near Grafton, the Oxley and Newell highways near Coonabarabran, and the Princes Highway near Batemans Bay and Bega.

Transport for NSW network and assets executive director Tom Grosskopf said the pilot initiative was in response to recommendations in the state bushfire inquiry to develop cultural burning practices as a land management strategy, and it could be rolled out across the state.

“Transport is the lifeblood of our community,” he said.

“We rely on these networks to keep us safe.”

‘Let us do our thing’

Batemans Bay Local Aboriginal Land Council chief executive Ros Carriage for some time has been working to promote traditional burning as a means of safety, maintaining culture and caring for country.

She has seen an increase in support for cultural burning since the Black Summer bushfires of 2019-2020.

“It needs to be done, and it needs to be done in a big way. It’s good for the country and good for the community,” Ms Carriage said.

She said slow cultural burns were different to hazard reduction burns because they involved small, multiple spot fires that created a mosaic burn pattern across the landscape that was slow moving and less hot.

Ms Carriage said the burns reduced the fuel load and ferocity of future bushfires along key highways, while also helping reintroduce endemic native species.

She said the new program validated the practice her people had been undertaking for thousands of years.

“It’s empowering for our community that we can do something and it’s not just a myth,” Ms Carriage said.

“People can see now that we looked after the country for the last 60,000 years, and we still can.

“It’s just going to be the norm for the future. Let us do our thing.”