Bushfires: The Price of Irresponsible Misuse of the Land

Over 200 dead in Victorian Bushfires: The Price of Irresponsible Misuse of the Land.
by Omaxa bin Eartha
Sunday 28th February 2009.

As dated, this e-ssay was first scribed while I was in northern NSW, in February, immediately after the devastating Victorian bushfires.

I returned to the effected forests a couple of months ago, and have spent the time dwelling again in them.

The experience leaves me somewhat “vacuous”, because the forests are so changed in appearance.

Blackened tree trunks, with most unusual regrowth of small bark-deep branches brimming with their loveable leaves, from the ground, all the way up the long, straight eucalypts, and mostly with dead spreading branches uptop. In pockets, mostly in the valleys, where the heat was most intense, there now stand thousands-upon-thousands of tall, very dead regrown eucalyptus trees. Very eerie!

However, as there's been a fair amount of rain since February, the ground flora of ferns, now about 300cm over the ground, and apparently every native flowering shrub, have blossomed back, interspersed with blackened “tree-fern” trunks, yet which have huge new growing, bright-green fern branches radiating from the trunk-tops, out well-over a metre in radius. The contrast of black and bright green ground cover and treefern regrowth is dazzling, and, in a strange way, beautiful to see.

A disconcerting sight, is where the department of forestry and/or next-door farmers have stripped the land of all regrowth and of course, the dead wood, in too many sections, totally.

As I mention in my connected e-ssay, “Reforesting Australia” there is a worry that the farmers are doing this so as to make the ex-forests grazing pasture for – UGH!? Cattle?

I'm also stressed by the high likelihood that the cleared forests will now be regarded as good for subdivision, into new regional housing suburbs, along the totally untenable and unsustainable lines of our utterly destructive suburbs. This is the story of western expansionist “civilisation”, to-be-sure, where the farmers who inherited the STOLEN Land from their pioneer ancestors, stand to make millions by this errant selling of the often prime agricultural soils.

Considering everything we are learning about the environmental chaos today, and it's causes, this type of ruthless and clearly ignorant profiteering must be deemed environmentally illegal!?

Nevertheless...., here's an updated reprint of the e-ssay I wrote in February......


I spent most of my life living in Victoria, in the Melbourne suburbs. By 18, I had a 500cc motorbike, and so spent many days, over about 30 years, riding around the Kinglake, Healesville and Warburton hills.

For a while in my 20s and 30s I ideated unsuccessfully, on owning some Land up in these regions.

Victoria is rightly named “The Garden State”, for there is a bevy of magnificent bushland, mountain ranges, lakes, forests and even deserts within Victoria's Land mass, which all delight the eyes and other senses, especially in the spring-time when Vic gets, or used to get, it's most rain, and thus colourful flowerings.

Over the last four years, I travelled back to Vic a couple of times, to try to sort out ridiculous family troubles, and spent months living in my vehicle around Wandong, Kilmore, Marysville, Yea, Kinglake, Whittlesea and the like, in the forests.

Having been raised to be a thinking fool, Philosophical evern, I've been bound to ponder over the lifestyles Australians live. Apart from my “mission” determined by mother's catholic convent to save the (Christian) world, I have always questioned the way Australians do things, especially the way they/we misuse the Land, as if their mis-and-maltreatment didn't matter, short or long term.

Knowing many Conservationists, called Greenies now, who were concerned about how the culture was going, or going astray, I saw it was almost an accepted tradition that People with a Social Conscience fought the Good Fight, usually of course from the “Left” of politics, Galantly and Honorably, and gave Soulful hours each week to “The Cause” beit in a political party or other groups 'going-to' econo-political and cultural issues.

As the 1970s passed, then the '80s, I witnessed a whittling-down of the older members of local politics. It was obvious that there was an almost general feeling that in the end, the fight was lost against much bigger more powerful 'interests', and that “Fight We Must!” remained, but that everyone has a life to live, and that politics, especially defeated politics, cannot take-over one's life entirely.

Most of the Good Folk were well educated and had an income of one professional or semi-professional color or another, so for them, coming also from reasonably well-to-do parents, the “dream” was working hard for a few decades (shorter if possible), then buying a nice slice of bush forest to build, settle and retire on.

Fair enough, aye?


From the beginnings of the Human Sojourn on Earth, we can be sure there have always been “issues” about how to treat and occupy the Land, and, how People should live together in the group, Clan or Mob.

In the 19th century, Henry George of the United States defined well, the “economic” side of Human-with-Human, and Human-with-the-Land relations, noting with simple Observation, called, perhaps rightly, “Prescience”, that the 19th century “All American Way” (noting that he was not short on criticism of it's genesis in the European mindset) was doing great harm to the Land, and, that the future bodes ill for the environment and thus for all mankind, if we were to continue occupying the Land, that is plundering it, as the “western” world was doing.

In most of the world before British/Eurapean expansionism, the Indigenous People everywhere had a Complete Understanding of the Best Way to live with each other and with the Terra Firma, their Mother. It was Known that the Land is Most Precious, and that the first thing anyone must do, is learn how to Live in Harmony with Her.

As researchers into history have found, all of them had a Special Relationship with the Earth, and Knew that to be allowed to keep living wherever they found themselves, they had to “pay-the-rent” to the Great Landlady.

Of course, not all of them had money as we know it, which is as “the most efficient medium of exchange”, but everyone of them Knew well, that the Great Mother only granted them tenancy if they Knew how and what to Sacrifice.

Rituals of Sacrifice have consequently almost always been a part of life for Humanity, and as we delve into what records exist of Ancient Indigenous Cultures, we find that Sacrifice was paid to the Gods of the Heavens and of the Earth, in-the-main so that the People may continue to live on the Mother's Land.

As research shows, most all of the “Nativist” (non-Eurapean) Tribes on Earth lived in Harmony, and the Great Mother was Happy to have them, for a myriad of different Peoples have lived for eons, for tens, if-not 100s-of-1000s of years with the Mother giving them everything they needed to be Healthy, Fully-Awakened, Intelligent and Wise.

Rules were part of the culture, and were followed strictly. The Wise taught the young how to read the Land like a text book, and Knew when the People had to do some particular thing or another, to suit the changes in season, climate, or other influences upon them.

As most animals in the “wild” do, the Ancient Peoples knew that “sprouting” babies whenever the urge arose was dangerous. For in the short term, if the climactic conditions were not suitable, “another mouth to feed” could spell suffering for the group, with possibly even worse results.

Most of them, I believe, knew how to abort a foetus, but I feel sure that the Old Folk Knew Better ways to control the size of the population.

That was simply through giving the children the mental, that-is Intellectual tools of Self-Discipline, so that they were not carried away with “lust” and desire for sex, nor with irrational desires for “a baybee!?” etc.

We have all heard of “Initiation”. Today, it seems implicit in staying alive amidst a mad throng of psychotic occultist groups, that we must go through an “initiation” before we are accepted into the coven, cult, club, clan, tribe or gang. Or Liberal Party....

As I'm the last Outlaw, I haven't found the club I want to believe in fully, so remain on the margins of society, uninitiated.

The only “initiation” the average Australian male experienced uptil recently, was, at reaching the age of 21, going to the pub or nightclub with a bunch of fellow juvenile idiots and getting oneself pissed rotten, falling down a set of stairs, breaking one's nose on a rake, vomiting on the bouncer, and being in Outer Bahrania for days suffering (A-hem! “Sacrificing!?”) from the worst hangover ever.

Yes “a loose” description, I agree. But it's not too far off! It's roots lying in reality, in old mother England (Britain) and her alcohol-centred culture.

In other cultures, that-is Purer, Wise, Ancient, Balanced Cultures, not the conglomerate mutation we call the “western culture”, Initiation was Fundamental to becoming an Adult, not an 'adult'-erated western twit, but one who has Learnt All The Rules deep in their Heart, and has shown they are fit to become a Respectable Member of the Adults of the Tribe.

A large part of the Knowledge the Initiate had to Learn and Understand, was of the Land, it's Creatures, it's plant-life, soils, water supplies, food resources and other bits and pieces for clothing, shelter, and a Good Stone on Special Occasions, etc.

Integral with this type of Knowledge was of course on how to co-habitate on the land. This meant that one could not merely acquire the tools then set-off to build one's own castle and family. NO! The Wisdom of the Ancestors told them that this would be bad for everyone eventually, especially if everyone was to do it.

We today call it “economies of scale”, but back then, in True Fella Country, it was known as “Muglongafondisetgitmusstay”, with variations....(?)

True Fella People of before the Brit/Eurapean overconsumption psychosis, had long-long-before, Divined that Humans Lived Best with the Land when they shared resources, shared the needs of the Group, shared the labor, and the facilities of shelter etc., and shared the “Governance” of Tribal Affairs, by living together. Also, the Ancients Knew that one should not be profligate with anything, be-it words or food, or material resources. Take only what you need, which is usually far less, hugely less, than the explosion-headed white culturites think they need.

This way, they would always have more than one head to go through issues and trauma, and the People-power for labor, (hunting, gathering, building, preparing), and for protection against the bad dudes down-river etc.

But not only were they cognisant of these group needs, they were also fully aware of the need to look after the Land, so that it would treat them aright. Australians now all know how the Australian Aborigine knew when the Land needed to burn, for example, and knew where, when and how to set fire to it, so that it would not become overgrown, or the fire burn out-of-control, thus pose a deadly threat to themselves and the local plant and animal life.

It has to be said, that Mother Nature Herself also Knew these things, and in a way white people failed to Understand a long-time ago. “Superstitious” Human practices of old, were often much more credible than we are prepared to admit or see in our “scientific age”, for superstition is often just a different, indeed DEEPER way of seeing Life, and as often is a much more complete way than the shallow sciences the Judeo-Christian cults are capable of seeing with or believing today.


It is a mite unfathomable that some 100 people were killed by the bushfires in the Kinglake area?

But, as I am familiar with the terrain thereabouts, and that everyone there, while professing to living in “A Solid Community”, '...who will all readily “pull together” when times are tough...', the reality I put it, is quite otherwise, as the incineration of that number of People is testimony to.

The paragraphs I wrote above about the Older Warriors retiring from The Good Fight, and settling in a nice piece of country, is, yes, 'a loose description' of what is happening all over the planet, and has been happening for generations no doubt.

But, politics aside, for there are doubtless as many rich, unpolitical or 'right-wing' me-first people occupying the region, who blithely adopt the same western cultural aberration of living on a largish piece of land (with the fortune of wealth) with just one, two, three or five nuclear family members.

“Australia” (or the white invasion) didn't get off to a good start, from the 1790s-on. All manner of obstacles came at the new settlers. Indignant Indigenies did their Righteous Bit in fighting to stop the rude invasion. The Mother, the Land, also did Her Bit to shoo them away, with droughts, floods, etc.

Added to these expected hurdles, came also from HOME, that-is from Britain, a swathe of chaotic minds already long-beggared by the tyrannical English system of injustice and corruption.

Amongst them, and amongst the “free-settlers”, were a lot of cynical, self-interested people, who after a life of struggle and injustice elsewhere, were cemented in how they approached life, the world and other people. Added to that were/are the pressures from the hierarchy of governments, and the wealthy “social designers” in such as banking and ruling dynastic families, who basically demanded that people adopt certain, for the elites, more profitable, ways of co-habiting the Land.

To be sure, the “nuclear family” was not the norm yet in 18th century Britain, but was something most everyone aspired to, for it was/is a sign, a status symbol, showing that they are successful, wealthy and independent enough to not need the group or extended family. Errant thinking at best.

Also, the nuclear family is a roaringly deadly sign that the Values of a Good, Sound, Wise and Economical Community, Society and People have been broken down to dust, and that, in such a resultant, broken society, it is not wise to live in too large a group, for “...wherever three or more are gathered, at least one is evil.” (One of my more cynical quotes.)

Need I go-into the reasons why this “...at least one is evil” way of seeing the society has merit today, and probably in the early years and decades since the first “Sorry Day”, was the general rule?


So! The 100 Victorian deaths in Kinglake were a result of this aberrant, though fully understandable way Australians have “evolved” to live.

I could leave it there, but it definitely deserves further definition, methinks.

For the passed eleven years I've lived in northern New South Wales, and spend weeks at a time in the few forests.

Actually, as is the case all over Australia, the bush I dwell within, is not “forest” but the remains of the woodcutter carnage of the last two-and-bit centuries. It's almost all regrowth now, and disgustingly BADLY managed regrowth at that.

But this is the case wherever one travels in Australia's “bush”. What “forests” there are, there is a near total loss of “biodiversity”, which is now recognised by science as being absolutely essential for sustainable forests, ecosystems, biospheres, and the macro, GLOBAL environment.

Yet, insanely, our authorities refuse to admit this FACT, and do NOTHING to correct their own, local and regional approach to Land management. It's as likely that Eurape and or the USA, lead by their meat-hungry corporate masters, would declare war on Australia were even just ONE Local Council to take Responsibility and Democratic control of it's terrain, of it's territory and call all it's farmers to adopt Environmentally Sound agricultural practices, mainly, chiefly, by banishing cattle and sheep, goats and al Pacas, etc, from the Lands.

Australians generally, it would appear, are so errant in their thinking, that the concept of having farmland occupied, that-is tenanted by farm-workers, under the supervision (in the Ideal Vision), of the titled Land-owner, who have their accommodation secured on-farm, paying the classic “peppercorn rent” to the land-owner, as well as either on-farm or very nearby schooling, medical, grocery and other essentials, with the farm-workers tending the fields of OH-NO!?!!?! VEGETABLES, GRAINS, LEGUMES and other non-meat foodstuffs, is a concept which seems to send the masses here wild!?

Clearly, the beef export industry has us all by the goolies.....!

However..., to continue from 4 paragraphs up “.....and disgustingly BADLY managed regrowth at that.”.... getting from town to the places I hide in, means I must drive several kilometres across “Bunjulung” Country, which means driving beside hectare-on-hectare of fenced-off Land.

This region has a “reputation” of being Alternative, or Greenie country, and many here are only too ready to say they are Greenies, yet driving through the terrain, this is seen to be “a furphy”.

What land is not stripped clean of forest and Indigenous flora and fauna, originally done for the timber to export back HOME to Britain, but as well, once settling became tenable, to offer a cleared spacial defence area or 'shield' for the invaders against the Righteous Aborigine Warrior, Owners of the Land, (who did..., gollygosh! insist on attacking the farmhouses, as often as they could).

But for many decades by now, the land was cleared purely so the rapacious whitey could posit perhaps one moocow per acre, to feed the exceedingly UNSUSTAINABLE and exceedingly “anti-Green” meat (and milk!) market, and the remaining terrain has been overgrown with introduced “weeds” such as Lantana, and pestulances such as the 'orrible 'cane toad'.

What has evolved since the massive carnage and biosphere's disruption, is that the Balance has GAWN MAYTE! “Exit, Stage Right!”

“IMBALANCE RULES!!!#$%^?”

Being a Nomad, in one guise..., a homeless outlaw, in another guise, the bleck sheep of an extremely wealthy dynasty...., I've travelled fouwsands-and-fouwsands of miles across the eastern and central states. So, in defence of the impotent Greenies who hide up here amongst the illegal Eurapean immigrants, the lantana... and the Marijuana, the carnage of Australia's Land is not specific to the so-called “Rainbow Region” of northern New South Wales.

IT'S EVERYWHERE!!! IT'S EVERYWHERE!!!

We all know that, aye?

The reason I'm going further into this well-known-yet-under-appreciated faunal carnage situation, is that, as I wrote in an article a few years ago after a flood in the Richmond River Valley caused a major fish-kill down near the mouth of the river, in the end, our local, State and National Authorities have a case to answer, in regard to their failure to properly care for the Land.

In regard to the Kinglake tragedy, I would, were I an Outlaw 'Silk' (a barrister or QC), take all our so-called “authorities” to the highest court in the Universe, er Land, on charges of being small-minded, self-interested, unwise and generally fucking pathetic bastards, for failing to have the Respect enough from, in this case, Victorians, such that they, and the government(s), sought, found AND FIRMLY ADOPTED, the Best Way to Live on the Land.

For clearly, if we-in-general WERE in possession of the Knowledge of How Best to Inhabit the Land, the People who lived in the Kinglake, Healesville, Warburton, Gembrook and other destroyed areas WOULD NOT LIVE AS THEY HAVE BEEN, which in my cynical HARDPolitik way, is saying that we have a failure of government to the degree of, as our Prime Minister put it “....mass murder...”!

Hmmm....?

Is the Victorian government therefore, in the running to be up on a charge of “setting the conditions of the society, for mass murder to be unavoidable”? Or such-like....?

Clearly, all things considered, John Brumby isn't a mass-murderer. And neither, thus far, is Kevin Rudd....

But somewhere, back in time, the conditions were established for this horror to be unavoidable.

Saddened folk await the official report on the mess. What will the reports and commissions tell them, and what will they recommend?

I have a few recommendations...........

Afore I go, I am obliged to say that the authorities, in the case of where I used to dwell, the NSW departments of environment, conservation, forests, parks and reserves et al et al, are in trouble for failing in the same way, to Properly manage the Land. Had I a life expectancy more than an hour at a time, I would take the relevant ones to court, demanding possession of the forests etc., so that I may introduce a regime of Repair to the flora and fauna.

For there is nothing of the sort happening now, unless bands of unlicensed and untameable yobos hacking through the reforests on unregistered motorbikes is New South Wales' way of getting rid of the vegetation?




Hers,

Omaxa bin Eartha
Outlaw,
for Global Land, Tax, Cult, Drug and Work LAW REFORM
Reforests of Godolonia
Uluruba.