Commentaries on Our World

Omeo Fire, History, Beauty

In the middle of last month I spent 4 days in a small Victorian, Australia, town in a district called East Gippsland called http://www.omeoregion.com.au/home.htmOmeo. Both Ecologically significant, and timber industry significant, you can imagine the various views I heard of the great forests that surround the place, Mountain Ash is the dominant tree of the forest, see details at this Parks Victoria site...http://www.parkweb.vic.gov.au/education/factfiles/20.htm.

With only a short time to return to my real life I was anxious to see as much as I could see and so the camera and interviews were conducted. The Omeo Museum in the Justice District of Omeo using the Old Court House and the surrounding buildings, the link is here: http://www.omeo.org.au/index.html where you can see where Claire and I spoke to Graeme about the fires. Some of you maybe familiar with the recent Southern California Wildfires, well here in Victoria, we manage to have large and more frequent events in remote and populated areas. Omeo is remote by most definitions and has suffered a number of massive Bush Fires in its history, the latest in 2007 January/February period. The hottest and driest period of the summer season for this state.

One of the main issues was the delay in fighting the fire when it was smaller and manageable in the National Park. Precisely because it was in the National Park that the CFA (Country Fire Austhority and Parks Victoria refused to do anything about it. As a result the fire didn't stay in the Park, did it!!! It grew in intensity and energy before threatening private land.