The road to recovery

After a recent fire in Gippsland , it's almost like watching a rebirth. The fires took their toll recently on the local area, stripping the landscape of it's foliage and lush green look.

These fires were burning in the second week of February, and it has only been recently that they managed to get the coal mine fire under control.

Summer in Australia usually indicates the beginning of fire season for us, we know the fires will occur, but we are never sure of when, or where. The one in Morwell was close to a coal mine and unfortunately, it was not contained and spread into an area of the mine that was no longer used. These fires stayed with the local area for 6 weeks.

Twice when I was in Morwell for appointments, I received the CFA (Country Fire Association) alert on my phone telling me to evacuate the area. It's an interesting message to receive, as it's quite limited and you wonder if it's safe to leave the way you arrived. Fortunately it was.

But let's not dwell on the fire itself, but rather the recovery. There is something about the regeneration of the Australian bush that is like a salve. I drive up the freeway frequently and the bush is burned , but you see signs of recovery... and with that comes hope of the lush Australian bush returning. The burned area is almost eerie as infrastructure in the area, such as the road safety barriers have melted under intense heat. Slowly they are removing the signs that melted, and are unreadable... they are removing trees that could be hazardous to the nearby road... and slowly it returns to what we remember.

However, while it's returning to it's beauty... there is the haunting reminder that we have to , as Australians, be careful in Summer.

It fascinates me to watch the bush recover, so I thought I would share a few photos I took over the weekend. There is a small local road that runs parallel with the freeway, so I ventured there to take some photos to help a little with perspective.


I particularly love how dormant buds under the bark, called epicormic buds, sprouted and in the following weeks the trees covered themselves with this fuzzy layer of foliage.