CYCLE OF FIRE STEPHEN J. PYNE "Cycle of Fire" is a suite of books that collectively narrate the story of how fire and humanity have interacted to shape the Earth. "Cycle" is an apt description of how fire functions in the natural world. Yet "cycle" also bears a mythic connotation: a set of sagas that tell the life of a culture hero. Here that role belongs to fire. Ranging across all continents and over thousands of years, the Cycle shows Earth to be a fire planet in which carbon-based terrestrial life and an oxygen-rich atmosphere have combined to make combustion both elementary and inevitable. Equally, the Cycle reveals humans as fire creatures, alternately dependent upon and threatened by their monopoly over combustion. Fire's possession began humanity's great dialogue with the Earth. "Cycle of Fire" tells, for the first time, that epic story. World Fire: The Culture of Fire on Earth Vestal Fire: An Environmental History, Told through Fire, of Europe and Europe's Encounter with the World Fire in America: A Cultural History of Wildland and Rural Fire Burning Bush: A Fire History of Australia The Ice: A Journey to Antarctica "Cycle of Fire" is part of Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books, published by the University of Washington Press under the general editorship of William Cronon. A complete list of Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books appears at the end of this volume. "Mr. Phipps and Bowman engaging the blacks who attempted to burn us out, March 15, 1856, Depot Creek, Victoria River," by Thomas Raines. Courtesy Royal Geographical Society. BURNING BUSH A Fire History of Australia STEPHEN J. PYNE With a Foreword by William Cronon and a New Preface by the Author University of Washington Press Seattle &) London Burning Bush: A Fire History of Australia by Stephen J. Pyne has been published with the assistance of a grant from the Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books Endowment, established by the Weyerhaeuser Company Foundation, members of the Weyerhaeuser family, and Janet and Jack Creighton. Copyright © 1991 by Stephen J. Pyne First published by Henry Holt and Company, Inc., New York Paperback edition published by the University of Washington Press in 1998 Foreword and Preface to the University of Washington Press paperback edition copyright © 1998 by the University of Washington Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or trans- mitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data ISBN 0-295-97677-2 Maps by Barbara Trapido TO SONJA, LYDIA, MOLLY— tolerant pynes who made worn for gums This page intentionally left blank Contents Foreword by William Cronon ix Preface to the 1998 Paperback Edition xiii Preface to the Original Edition: Firestick History xvii Map of Australia xxii Map of Australia's Vegetation xxiv Prologue: Dust to Dust 1 BOOK I: THE EUCALYPT 1. The Universal Australian 15 2. Unimaginable Freaks of Fire: Profile of a Pyrophyte 26 3. Red Centre: Fire Regimes of Old Australia 42 4. Land of Contrarities 57 BOOK II: THE ABORIGINE 5. Flaming Front 71 6. Firestick Farmer: Profile of a Pyrophile 85 7. Fires of the Dreaming 105 8. Smokes by Day, Fires by Night: Fire Regimes of Aboriginal Australia 121 9. This Wonderful Depository of Fire 136 viii Contents BOOK III: THE EUROPEAN 10. Entwining Fire 153 11. Reconnaissance by Fire: Education of a Pyrophile 183 12. Red Steers and Green Pick 199 13. Beyond the Black Stump 227 14. Fire Conservancy 247 15. Burning Off: Fire Provinces of European Australia 275 16. When the Billy Boiled 301 BOOK IV: THE NEW AUSTRALIAN 17. The Two Fires 321 18. Antipodean Fire: The Australian Strategy 338 19. Wild Bush, Urban Bush: Fire Regimes of New Australia 364 20. Dieback 388 Epilogue: Ashes to Ashes 410 Notes 423 Bibliographic Essay 493 Index 499 Foreword Eucalypt History WILLIAM CRONON ONE OF MY REGULAR PRACTICES when teaching seminars in environmental history is to ask students to keep a weekly journal of thoughts that occur to them as they reflect on how our assignments and class discussions connect to their daily lives and to what they read in the newspaper. Each week, semi- nar members turn in their journal entries, and each week I reply with mar- ginal commentaries that become a kind of ongoing conversation between the students and me. One of the most remarkable such entries I ever received arrived shortly after a series of wildfires had swept through the Berkeley Hills in the city of Oakland, California, devastating many dozens of houses. Such wildfires are of course a "natural" feature of the California landscape, the inevitable consequence of people choosing to build flammable structures on fire-prone hillsides in a climate given to frequent periods of drought. But the journal entry my student turned in as her class assignment offered an explanation for the recent tragedy in Oakland that was at once less obvi- ous and more arresting. The real culprit, she argued, was Frederick Law Olmsted. With tongue planted only halfway in cheek, she offered the thesis—less implausible than it may first appear—that the fires could be blamed on America's greatest landscape architect, the man who designed Central Park and who helped promote a suburban vision in which the ideal domestic residence was situated in a semi-urban, semi-rural landscape where families could shelter themselves from a workaday world in cottage-like houses surrounded by grass, gardens, and leafy trees. However attractive this suburban vision might be as a residential environment in the eastern cities where Olmsted first articulated it, my student said, it could hardly be less suited to the arid West. In a place like Oakland, the greenery with which Olmsted believed his suburban dwellers should surround themselves became