FIERCE BUSH-FIRES

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 568, 22 January 1929, Page 9

FIERCE BUSH-FIRES

AUSTRALIA UNDER PALL OF SMOKE FEARFUL HEAT AND GLARE When Professor H. D. Kirk, Professor of Biology at Victoria University College, Wellington, went to New South Wales on holiday he did not expect to be surrounded by fierce bush fires. While he was staying at Mittagong, however, bush fires broke out and he was able to see something of the enormous damage which was done. “The heat and the glare were fearful,” said Professor Kirk this morning, on the Ulimaroa. “The sun looked like a scarlet ball, and the pall of smoke covered the whole countryside for miles. The most depressing thing about the fire was to ride past the burned cottages.” Professor Kirk said that the Australian forest recovered very quickly from the ravages of fire: In three months’ time green shoots could he seen coming from the trees and seedlings had burst through the ground.

Fire in the Australian bush travelled through the undergrowth, whereas in New Zealand it went from treetop to tree-top. The only way of coping with the Australian outbreaks was to cut away the undergrowth; if a belt of trees were felled the fire simply galloped over it. New South Wales was suffering from the hottest and driest summer it had experienced for years.