DEAR News Of The Area,
IT puzzles me that no-one seems to be alert to a really obvious (to me at least) risk that is staring all of us, who live in and near Dungog, in the face.
That risk is the possibility of a bushfire coming out of the Dungog Common.
I am not as old as some, but I am older than most of you. And I do have a good memory of many things that happened before most of you were born.
In 1936, I was three years old. And I can vividly recall the horror and, yes, bewilderment, of not only my parents, but the entire town, when a fire came out of the Common and destroyed the-then timber nurses’ home.
Dungog was said to have been saved by a wind change, as I recall.
The fire went on to wreak havoc (Fosterton to the north, and Alison to the east). Quite a few houses were lost.
To return to the present.
The Common has been deliberately let grow up.
There is quite a small forest of regrowth eucalypt trees, perhaps 12/15 metres tall, with thick bushy tops, and grass a metre high at their foot.
The rest of the area to the west is similarly covered in rank grasses. Ideal bushfire material.
Would it not be a sensible precaution to at least burn a firebreak along the eastern edge of the Common?
It should not be such an onerous task, with all the modern equipment at our disposal these days.
And now is the time to get it done.
You only have to watch your TV each night to get an idea of what is very likely to be happening here this
coming summer.
A roaring fire on a 40-degree day, with a howling Westerly behind it?
Doesn’t bear thinking about.
The time, again, is now.
Regards,
Tom Boorer,
Dungog.
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