Rachel Hagan, Yorke Peninsula Country Times
After about a 200-year hiatus, the Narungga Nation cultural burning practices have returned to Guuranda (Yorke Peninsula) to help bring back balance to a landscape traditionally shaped by fire.
Throughout the year, a series of workshops have brought the burning practice back to Country at Dhilba Guuranda-Innes National Park, Ardrossan grasslands and Minlagawi nature reserve.
This year’s biggest burn covered 0.7 hectares.
The fires helped reduce invasive species and boosted native plants, bringing to life dormant seeds in the soil.
Nharangga cultural burns practitioner Peter Turner said every First Nation had a fire practitioner, and their practice was only stopped because of the restrictions that colonisation enforced on Aboriginal people.
“They removed the people off the land, and they stopped the practice of fire,” Mr Turner said.
“And now we’ve got that much fuel load out there in this Country.”
The project is supported by the Australian Government’s Preparing Australian Communities grant, and is a part of the Marna Banggara project, which aims to restore Guuranda’s landscape.
First Nations people developed the science of cultural burning over tens of thousands of years, which ingrained fire management deeply into the hundreds of different cultures across this country.
Mr Turner said an important part of cultural burning was using the right type of fire for the right type of Country.
“Our plants have evolved with fire, to accept the fire and work with it,” he said.
“The animals will remember, Country will remember, the plants will remember fire because it all evolved with fire.”
The fire trickles through the landscape and leaves a mosaic pattern, which reduces the fuel load, but allows the habit at to remain intact.
The grant-funded burns have now concluded; however, Yorke Peninsula Council intends to continue the burns as a part of operational landscape management.
Footage captured during the workshops has been turned into a short film with participants from Narungga Nation Aboriginal Corporation, Point Pearce Aboriginal Corporation/Indigenous Protected Areas Rangers, Nharangga Aboriginal Progress Association, Nharangga Aboriginal Cultural Tours, Northern and Yorke Landscape Board, Firesticks, and Narungga community members contributing.
The film can be viewed at: https://yorke.sa.gov.au/environment/ cultural-burns/.
This article appeared in Yorke Peninsula Country Times, 5 November 2024.