Years of rebuilding ahead for fruit growers after devastating fires at Gingin and Chittering

Gingin mango grower Tony Maddern stands in a row of scorched trees. Most of his farm was burnt in a fire earlier this year. (ABC Rural: Joanna Prendergast)

Fruit growers say it will take years for their orchards to recover from a devastating fire that burnt through almost 3,000 hectares north of Perth in late January.

Two homes were destroyed and other properties suffered serious damage when the fire ripped through the shires of Gingin and Chittering.

Tony Maddern should have been celebrating his 75th birthday, but instead the former firefighter spent January 14 watching a large bushfire approach his orchard at Gingin.

“I’ve seen some pretty bad fires but nothing as bad as this, in this area,” he said.

Mr Maddern and his wife Jenny activated their fire plan and evacuated their property, driving past their mango trees which were just two weeks away from being harvested.

But harvest did not happen, with the flames scorching most of their mango trees, passionfruit, avocado, and citrus crops, along with 80 per cent of the Madderns’ farm.

“To see it all cooked and shrivelled on the trees it’s just devastating. That’s all your income gone,” Mr Maddern said.

Long recovery process

Five months on, the path of recovery is a long one.

Pipes and watering systems were burnt and melted, and trees scorched from the heat of the flames.

Of their 4,500 mature Kensington Pride mango trees, 1,200 were left in a condition that will bear fruit this season.

Mr Maddern is hopeful they will all eventually recover, but concedes it will take time.

“The depth of the burn on the trunks of the trees is not all that great,” he said.

“I’ve scraped back on some and it does not go into the sapwood, so that’s why I say they will come back. But it’s just a matter of time and decent rain this year.”

Having watered the trees the night before the fire, Mr Maddern believes wet leaf litter helped some of the trees survive the heat.

Flames travelled through the base of the trees and the mangoes themselves did not ignite.

“I’ve seen mangoes burnt worse than this and they’ve come back, but it’s taken a few years,” he said.

“So we live in hope.”

The Madderns will harvest a small mango crop from their remaining trees in February while nursing their scorched trees back to health.

“We had [retirement] plans in place, but they’re on the back burner now,” Mr Maddern said.

“I’m keeping going. I want to get it back to what it was.”

The Madderns are also counting their blessings. Thanks to the incredible efforts of firefighters their house was saved from the fire, despite being surrounded by tall trees.

Soaring temperatures another blow

Just over the hill from the Madderns, Alan Blight manages Avowest, an avocado grower with several blocks north of Perth.

Mr Blight said the Gingin block of avocado trees would not produce a crop this season due to heat scorch and damage from soaring temperatures in mid January, which occurred at the same time that water infrastructure was damaged by fire.

“Our pumping infrastructure was still intact, so the immediate response was to replace polythene pipes that had been burnt out, trying to restore the irrigation to the trees as quickly as we could,” he said.

“Unfortunately avocados do drop fruit over summer, often in response to hot weather, so we had a period of time with hot weather and no water.”

Some trees on the edges of the orchard were burnt where Mr Blight had been trialling drip irrigation in a bid to use less water.

“It tends to have a drier leaf content on the ground, which was a source of fuel, so unfortunately they are dead,” he said.

“The trees with sprinklers had green grass, so there wasn’t the fuel.”