If the same money was put into sensible management – mild burning – people and houses and wildlife would be safe in any weather. Same thing again – fire exploded in thick scrub, and jumped the Bega River. Mullins says homes were lost at Tathra because of climate change. There were four other places where runs of fire under extreme weather were contained in areas previously treated by mild burning. One run of fire jumped nearly a kilometre over the Woronora River before claiming human life. It’s the 3-dimensionally continuous fuels which create firestorms and showers of embers that light spots miles ahead of the front. Mullins’ said dad shook his head and said “ something’s really wrong”. Weather conditions were no worse in Sydney in 1994, when uncontrollable fires burnt 30,000 hectares and hundreds of houses, and people died despite huge armies of firefighters with the latest technology. The fires were “ got under” by settlers with green branches. On another extreme day, 5th December 1792, one hut and some gardens and fences at Sydney got burnt, as well as a thatched hut, some outbuildings and a stack of wheat at Arndell’s farm near Parramatta.

Imagine what Tim Flannery’s “Climate Crazies” would say about it now! But the European settlement wasn’t touched by the fires. In what is now Parramatta Park, parrots and flying foxes were dropping dead from the sky. In February 1791, Aboriginal fires were burning in this sandstone country under mid-forties temperatures and howling north westerly winds. You can’t run or ride a horse through it, even in broad daylight. Surveyor Mitchell rode through Sydney’s sandstone country “ on many a dark night” with Aboriginal boys “ tearing off the stringy bark which served for torches, and setting fire to the grass trees to light my way”. If we get fires under the same weather conditions today, they’ll destroy everything from Bairnsdale to Sydney. John has formed the East Gippsland Wildfire Taskforce to try and restore sanity. John’s family weren’t worried, even when his uncle’s car repeatedly stopped because of vapour locks in the fuel lines with the extreme heat. There were hundreds of fires in East Gippsland at that same time, but no major problems because the bush was kept clean by burning and grazing. John Mulligan lived through the Black Friday fires that burnt two million hectares of Victoria and killed 71 people. Greg Mullins’ dad told him about 1939 when “ the sky seemed to be on fire every night”. Vic Jurskis– author of Firestick Ecology: fairdinkum science in plain English Explosive fuel in 2016, Royal National Park, Princes Highway in suburban Sydney, where fire started that killed 3 firefighters and maimed 6 in 1983 – thirty years later the fuel is much worse.

Sydney fire commander