The rams love this cool spot under old man willow, and spend the hot part of any day, including a bad fire day, hiding here.
Saturday, 4 January
As I’m writing this, we’re experiencing a Very High Fire Danger day here in Tas, but nothing like what they are going through on the mainland. I’m inside, out of the heat, but listening to the 50 kph winds whistling around my house, and obsessively checking the Tas Fire Services website to see if any new fires have started up anywhere nearby. The southerly change (front) that is making it so windy has reduced the temperature, and blown away this morning’s smoke haze. Knowing just how dry the landscape is, though, keeps me on tenterhooks.
The primary fire risks for me come from dry lightning and from a careless cigarette tossed out the window of a car traveling along my 5 km-long northwest boundary. I’ve had fires from both sources—last year from lightning, and about this time in 2016 from a cigarette. The highway worries me more, as it is upwind of the farm for its full length, given the prevailing wind direction on a fire day, and it is the only major highway running through the middle of Tas. Actually, it’s the only major highway IN Tas, so there’s a lot of opportunity for someone to do something idiotic.
After the January 2016 fire. The dark triangles are tree reserves, which were scorched. The gum trees have since come back, but not the softer trees and shrubs. I have funding to replace them this coming winter.
I don’t have a lot of trees on my farm, despite the 10,000 or so I’ve planted over the past two decades, so I’m really dealing with grassland fires. Grassland fires are both easier and harder to deal with than true bushfires with lots of trees involved. Grass fires travel very quickly and burn very hot, but are generally easier to get under control as the fuel burns away with the first passage of fire. So my challenge in protecting myself and my animals is to be ready well before a fire gets going.
Water-bombing helicopter above the January 2019 fire.
Years ago, I decided to develop a bushfire plan for my place, and particularly for my sheep. Unlike horses, sheep don’t fear fire and won’t run from it. At the time, I had sheep in 5 or 6 separate small flocks, by age groups, set-stocked all around the property.
As an exercise, my then-stockman Davey (who is still going strong at nearly 93, btw) and I decided to see how long it would take to get all the sheep to the main yards, where spray from a firefighting unit had a chance of protecting them. Boy did we (well especially me!) learn a lot. It took us over 2 hours, and even then we missed a few sheep in our hurry. If we hadn’t been hurrying, I’m sure we’d have been quicker, as our haste communicated itself to the sheep, and they reacted by being totally contrary! In that 2 hours, a grass fire would have easily burned from one end of my farm to the other.
The end result of the exercise was a plan in which I move sheep closer to the main yards in the days preceding serious fire danger. This has become much simpler as I now run all my sheep in a single flock, and there are lots fewer sheep (550) than there were back then (1800). Depending on the fire danger rating, the expected wind direction and presence or absence of serious fires upwind of the farm, I will move them to smaller paddocks that have easy access to the yards or put them directly into the yards as I did last Monday when we had Extreme Fire danger (the second highest rating, behind the Catastrophic rating today in parts of Victoria and NSW).
January 2019—this one started with a dry lightning strike. I was very lucky that the aircraft and local firefighters got in under control in a short time. It burned only a couple of acres, though sadly there were about 50 5-year old trees in the reserve where it started.
My seasonal grazing pattern is aligned with the fire risk scenario, too. The summer grazing area is the part of the farm closest to the main yards. That means I don’t have to keep trailing sheep back and forth between the fire muster areas and the back of the property. (It also makes it easier for me to catch and treat a fly struck sheep, rather than trying to run it down in the paddock! I just put the flock in the yards and sort out the afflicted sheep in the race where it can’t get away from me.)
One of the lessons I learned a few years ago is to ensure the flock has access to water during the day. It’s not that they can’t manage without a drink for a few hours, just like we can. It’s that they then mob the water trough when I do let them into a paddock with water. So now my “nearby safer place” paddocks, like the yards, are always ones with a trough. The sheep are really good about sharing and taking turns, as long as they’re not really thirsty.
Getting a drink before the day gets too hot. This is the same area that burned in 2016, looking back in the direction the burn photo was taken.
As for the rest of the farm, including me and the dogs, my house is bushfire compliant, with extra water storage tanks that remain full at all times for the firefighters to tap into. I have a 1500 liter (400 gallon) firefighting unit on its own trailer. On a day like last Monday or today, I hook it up to the ute first thing, and it stays hooked up until the fire danger rating diminishes.
I have a 6000 liter storage tank on the top of a hill that feeds the water troughs and my household hoses. Because it’s gravity fed, if the mains power goes out—and it often does under these circumstances—water will still flow. I normally turn the pump on to keep the tank full at the beginning of a bad fire day.
My wonderful firefighting unit: 1500 litres (about 400 gallons) with its own dedicated trailer, pump, generator and fire hose. Comes in hand for watering baby trees, too.
Managing fire threat is a risk management process in the truest sense of the expression. I know that I would not be able to fight a fire at the scale of the property—it would have to burn itself out if the fire fighters couldn’t contain it. But I’m optimistic that I can protect my animals and myself through planning ahead, responding in good time to the threat forecasts, and staying alert when the danger level is high. I hope.
The two videos below are just for fun. The first is one I shot in the morning as we were heading into the day. It’s an Instagram post, so you may have seen it on @whitegumwool. The second is a Come Shepherding exclusive—some reflections from me as I watched sheep coming back for water as I was taking them to the shed for crutching, back in December.