Time to do something sensible about the bushfire threat.....

Pondering the summer certainty of bushfires and while some people have turned the 'bush' into something sacred to ridiculous degrees, particularly given the fact that we have fire-dependent, fire-loving eucalypts as the dominant species across the continent because Aboriginal fire-farming practices led to the destruction of the native rainforest and grasses which previously covered the continent....

surely it is time to be practical and to look to replace a lot of the bush in and around cities with non-eucalypts - that means plantings of non-incendiary trees, like those the early settlers so sensibly planted from the time they arrived, in order to lessen the bushfire threat???

Oaks, elms, ash, anything which does not represent an oil-filled fire threat waiting to explode in the right conditions. Beyond the fact that gums are also incredibly dangerous around humans, given their propensity to drop huge branches without warning, particularly in summer, surely it is time to create safe areas for humans and safe areas for bush where, if there are fires it is not going to possibly destroy livelihoods or lives?

Yep, really nice living in a bush setting but keep it for holidays and not for home. And for all those who get absolutely hysterical about such a concept and believe that retaining the 'natural environment' matters most - just remember that the Australian bush with its eucalypts was not the natural environment in ancient times anymore than the 'green fields' and tidy lanes of England are the 'natural environment.'