I love the simplicity, culture and attitudes of my local Bushfire Brigade. The members of the Dry Plains Brigade are a practical bunch of rural people that don’t like wasting money and are willing to fix things when they are broken or damaged. All around us, we see a world that is becoming wasteful and items are discarded in place of the newer product.
I love the new stuff as much as anyone else, but I do try to move things along to another user, recycle and reuse wherever possible.
In a stark contrast, the NSW Rural Fire Service and the NSW Government seems to be wasting huge amounts of money on many unnecessary empire building developments including expensive fire suppression strategies. Meanwhile the simple things like accepting and allowing Aboriginal land management practices to be used by communities and Brigades gets kiboshed by red tape. These simple and effective land management practices have the potential to save huge amounts of money and the environment from certain destruction.
I’m not suggesting that we discard new firefighting technologies but we seem to have thrown the baby out with the bathwater, discarding much of the local knowledge, bush skills and practical firefighting skill (formerly referred to as firemanship).
