Film - Malcolm McKinnon, 'Cleansing Smoke', 2010

BRUCE BAXTER: I grew up on the riverbank near Robinvale. And everything we did was around the campfire. And anyone in the camp would come and cook their meal on that fire.

My role was to keep camp clean. Like leaves and that lying around, I would have to make a broom and clean the whole area.

But this mother came back to the camp. Wasn't taking any notice of anything, just started sweeping and whistling. Then all of a sudden, my nan rushed out of the old shack, grabbed my broom, and beat me with it. Then my parents come home. And my grandmother said to my uncle and my dad, "Boys, make me green fire."

So I'm walking around rubbing all the sore spots, trying to get some sympathy. Never got any. My dad had a little fire going like this. My uncle come out with a big hunk of leaves, big armful, and put it on the fire. Big smoke. My nana come out of the house, put me in the chaff bag, and hung me over the smoke for about 15 to 20 minutes. I think I come out of the bag looking the color of rainbow, coughing and spluttering.

And it wasn't until three months later that we were sitting around the campfire at night yarning. My nana, sitting on her old chair, called me over. "Come here, boy." I said, "What, Nana?" "Climb up on my lap." She said, "You remember when I smoked you?" I said, "Yeah. Never forgotten it, Nana."

She said, "Do you know why I did it?" I said, "No, Nana, I don't." She said, "What was you doing?" I said, "I was sweeping and I was whistling." She said, "But did you look where the sun was?" I said, "No, Nana." She said, "That sun was just starting to set. And you were sweeping and whistling."

And her belief was that I was sweeping away the good spirit from the camp, and with my whistling, whistling in the bad spirit.

Ever since then, my Nana said to me, "Your job in your life is the keeper of the smoke."

Grab the smoke and bring it here.

It's a spiritual cleansing of the smoke. Everything the smoke touches cleanses. I noticed that a few of those this morning were walking up and doing that. But you got to walk into the smoke and let it go all over you. It cleanses your body.

Smoking ceremonies have been happening for thousands of years, like the story of Captain Cook when he landed. He called the land terra nullius, "land belonging to no one." But at night, he seen all thse fires. No one lives here. We had those fires back.

Film - Malcolm McKinnon, 'Agni, God of Fire', 2010

[FIRE CRACKLING]

ARCHANA PATNEY: We're going to do a rangoli for you today. In India, it's normally done in our festivals. A rangoli is done on the floor, and then in the center, there is a Yajna.

So it's a small fire, and it's believed that the fire god Agni connects man to the gods in heaven. The god Agni is considered a creator as well as a destroyer. Because it gives us light. It gives us heat. Gives us energy to cook food. And so it is believed that the fire connects man to the gods in heaven. So if you do want to offer something to god, you actually place it in the fire.

[FIRE CRACKLING]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Film - Malcolm McKinnon, 'Acceptable Risk', 2010

DIANE SIMMONS: I came into the area about 30 years ago, and really there's nowhere else in the whole area where you get to meet people. So there's no general store, there's no news agent, there's no petrol station. So, the message was, if you're going to know anyone in the area, join the fire brigade.

I think back in the late '70s, 30 odd years ago, when a large number of people moved into this area, it was very unusual for CFA brigades to have, also, a strong conservation ethic.

And I think one of the things we were always struggling with was trying to reconcile the need that you often have as a firefighter. To manage a fire, put it out, that meant cutting down a tree, because you need to go home.

We often wondered whether we could do things better, and maintain our conservation ethic, and try and manage fires in a better way to have minimum impact on the environment. And as part of that we came up with this idea of the red truck and a green hat. So we've had that as our brigade motto, whatever you want to call it, for really a very long time now. And I think many people in the brigade still relate to that as a brigade ethos.

We are in a fire prone environment, but there are ways to mitigate that risk. I guess after 2009, many people say, life is sacrosanct. That no one should take risk with their life. I'm not sure that I personally agree with that.

Perhaps it is an acceptable risk that some people, me even, might lose their life in an extraordinary event. We send soldiers to Afghanistan. We want them all to come home. Sometimes they don't.

We want to live in the Bush. We want everyone to survive every fire. Sometimes they don't. I mean, for me, sometimes that's the sort of way that I think about living in a place that means a great deal to me personally, but does carry a level of risk that I hope I mitigate to an acceptable level.

If you want to live in a particular sort of environment, then you have to have the good with the bad. And you accept that you have, perhaps, a higher level of risk. If you don't want that risk, maybe it's not about changing the environment entirely. Maybe you would be happier living somewhere else where there was a lower level of risk.

So I think there is that sense of entitlement that you can have everything where you live. And perhaps that's not true.

Film - Malcolm McKinnon, 'Dancing Angels', 2010

[FIRE CRACKLING]

LANCE ROBILLIARD (VOICEOVER): A lot of the trees on this probably are well in excess of 100 years old. Mother Nature decided to take this big tree down in a storm.

[CHAINSAW WHIRRING]

The tree is being cut up into eight foot sections, the main barrel of the tree. That's being loaded on all the small stuff underneath, because the tree is green. The logs, as you can see, are being stacked in a staircase fashion on this side, and the other side, and they will fall in.

We've picked today to do this, because the wind direction by late afternoon is supposed to go nor'west, which it is now.

So I think we better get on with the job. Get this fire happening. I went and collected some of the pine needles. As that takes hold, it'll burn into the more secondary-type fuels, creating more heat. And then it'll take hold into the greener material, into the bigger logs. And, as you see, the file will progress very quickly. And as you put the stuff on, you put your biggest stuff on like I'm doing. And as you're getting a bit of heat in this fire, there will be no stopping this now, this is going to go.

[FIRE CRACKLING]

The only way to burn big logs like this is to have them side-by-side, higgledy-piggledy. It takes two logs to burn one another out. If you've only got one piece of wood, it's not going to burn. Doesn't matter how big or small it is.

You can see the fire attaching itself to the end of the log, where the resin has come out of the timber since I've cut it. So there's enough natural accelerant in the heap to create this fire activity. And now the breeze is getting into your flame, and she's really starting to get heat.

[FIRE ROARING]

As you can see, the fire activity is like a bush fire now at this side. Gives you some idea of, if you live in the bush areas, that's what you're going to get. The wind now is lifting the bark. And we've got an ember fall out, you can see them against the sky.

[FIRE CRACKLING]

The fire is building because of the wind. So if this was in a suburban situation, you'd be burning your neighbor out five houses up. So it's not recommended to do this in the backyard.

[MACHINE RUNNING]

[FIRE CRACKLING]

It's like dancing angels. You can always tell the intensity of the fire by the roar of it. That's hot.

[FIRE CRACKLING]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Film - Malcolm McKinnon, 'FIRE, SPACE and TIME', 2010

[FIRE CRACKLING]

KEVIN TOLHURST: I think people are naturally attracted to fire. There's a fascination and there's a power about fire. And that provides a real opportunity to actually understand it. So rather than treat it as some sort of supernatural, inexplicable force, we can actually use that fascination to learn more about it.

Fire plays an incredible role in our environment. And we need to look at the whole picture, rather than just zoom in on the actual short space of time when the fire actually occurs or the immediate consequence. And getting that spatial and time perspective on fire allows us to look at fire in a very different way.

[FIRE CRACKLING]

I think one of the traps that we fall into as human beings is we often see the environment as it is right now, without trying to understand how it is that its come to be the why it is. And we need to understand, well, what role has fire played in this environment? And there's nowhere in Australia where fire hasn't had some influence. So the question for us is that when they live in an environment, we need to learn and understand that environment.

Just realizing that fire is an incredible and inextricable part of that environment has to be a realization and an admission we need to make. So we have to actually take a very active personal role in this. In the same way as if we want to make a new friend, we learn as much as we can about their personality. We learn as much about what their behavior is likely to be under certain circumstances.

We need to do exactly the same thing with the environment because we want to be friends and we want to actually live in that environment. We need to learn about it, know what its behavior is, and know what to expect under different circumstances. It's really no different.

[BIRD CRIES]

Without fire in our environment, our environment basically stagnates and becomes a much less balanced and a much less productive environment. So rather than looking at the moment that the fire has occurred, we need to look at fire as part of an environmental process over decades and centuries. It's a fire regime that we ought to be looking at.

[FIRE CRACKLING]

Part of what living in the environment means, it's not about providing ourselves an armored suit. It's not providing some high level of protection to isolate ourselves from that environment. We need to come to an understanding of that environment and learn about that environment so that we can actually live with it in a knowing and meaningful way.

[BIRD CRIES]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Film - Malcolm McKinnon, 'The Fiery Toolbox', 2010

[FIRE CRACKLING]

LANCE ROBILLIARD:  Growing up, I mostly was educated with a chainsaw in one hand a box of matches in the other. And when I was old enough to get around the farm and help Father clean up trees and that, you soon got the idea. And if you did something wrong, you'd find yourself either getting a bit scorched or burning the tips or your fingers, or you soon learned that fire had the other side attached to it, that it can hurt. Like Dad used to say, it's a very good servant but a shocking master.

[FIRE CRACKLING]

If you've had to use fire as a tool, it becomes second nature. Whereas unfortunately, other people who are not associated with the land or the forest, yeah, they might think they can light a fire-- and they can. Everyone can strike a match. But sometimes, that's where it ends-- and sometimes, unfortunately, not in the right direction.

[FIRE CRACKLING]

There is a skill to the art of lighting safe fires. There's no two ways about it. And something which-- as the shift of the population to our cities and not being allowed to burn in our cities, a lot of these skills are being lost.

[FIRE CRACKLING]

Those who haven't been connected with it, I think, have lost the skills. I see some funny things, even in the local community, where someone will try and light a fire, and it doesn't matter what they'll do, they've got no hope. That fire's not going to burn. He hasn't presented the material right, and he's more likely to do more harm to himself, because he's going to get angry. And he's going to get at it with accelerants, and then he's going to find himself being scorched.

[FIRE CRACKLING]

It doesn't hurt to take notice, when you're with somebody, when they are lighting a fire, just to-- it doesn't hurt to ask a few questions. Because it's knowledge that one day you might need, to safely do some burning work yourself without creating a nightmare of red firetruck turning up to your place, and looking very embarrassed because you've just set fire to the neighbors. There's a right way and a wrong way. And Dad used to say, think twice and act once. [CHUCKLES]

[FIRE CRACKLING]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Film - Malcolm McKinnon, 'My Mother's Ashes', 2010

When mum died, it was just assumed that she'd be cremated. There's something cleaner about a cremation rather than a slow disintegration underground, I guess, is the way I feel about it. I'm not a religious person, but I still sort of have this idea that even though it's just, I guess, some kind of carbon matter, these ashes, that there's still some semblance of essence of person in there somehow.

When I picked mum's ashes up from the funeral director, where I collected them, and to take them home, I put her in the backseat, and I put her seat belt on, and I talked to the container. And it was like, oh, are you all right then, mum?

The funeral director when we picked up the ashes, she was a lovely lady, and this was part of what she does every day, and it was very matter-of-fact for her to speak about, now, do you know what they're going to look like? No. And she said, well, people think they're a fine sort  of ash like you get when you've had a fire in the fireplace, but it's not the case because some of the larger, heavier bones, they don't reduce into ashes, and there's lumpy bits. There's big lumpy bits.

So when you open this up, there might be some fine, ashy bits, and there might be some big, lumpy bits. And I'm thinking, this is mama she's talking about. But it wasn't my mum. It was material, sort of flakey, lumpy, material that's going to blow away in the wind.

I had this fantasy about taking my parents' ashes back to their home country. Maybe I could take a little piece of them. But then I really thought it was wrong to separate the ashes. What bit of their body would that be? Like would I just be taking my mother's big toe to Germany, and would she be missing something?

I really ultimately think that we will scatter my parents' ashes. I can't contain my mother in that mosaic utter that I've made because she'd too big to contain. But time will come, and I think the sea is a good place because perhaps ultimately, parts of my parents might even reach Europe. Who knows which way the tide's going.

Film - Malcolm McKinnon, 'Firing the Orchid', 2010

[FIRE CRACKLING]

ANDREW PRITCHARD:  I'm a local Portland person. I grew up in the botanical gardens in Portland. My father was a curator of the botanical gardens. I've had an active interest in plant things from when I was a young boy.

I first become involved with Mellblom's spider orchid when I was about 13. My brother brought me out here after a wildfire that occurred in 1976. And it was a recent discovery for that at that stage. It hadn't been seen for quite a number of years prior to that. Quite an outstanding find back then. And it was quite exciting for me when I was 13, wandering through thick vegetation after a fire, getting all black and charcoal-y, and seeing this wonderful flowering plant that was just standing out.

Fire is very important for this species. It opens up the environment. It puts a whole lot of carbon back into the ground. It creates open spaces, which are important for a whole range of things that this particular orchid requires.

After a summer fire, this plant will initiate a leaf come March, April. It will flower in October. The orchid mimics a female wasp. It's a Thynnine wasp. So it mimics that pheremone and mimics the look at that female wasp so that it tricks the male into thinking it's a female wasp.

So he comes down, he lands on the labellum of the orchid. So labellum rocks backwards and forwards. Pollen is deposited on the back of his neck. He gets a bit frustrated, flies away.

If we're lucky, that male wasp that's got the pollen on the back of his head will go on to another orchid. And then the pollen is transferred onto that orchid. That's how the orchid actually gets to be able to do what it does.

[BUZZING]

Pre-European times, Mellblom's spider orchid would've been utilized by traditional peoples for tubers, so it would have been consumed. And the area would've been managed by a number of methods, by fire stick methods-- so burning at the time, so when traditional people burnt the landscape. And also by wildfire, lightning events which traditionally happened in the summer period.

[FIRE CRACKLING]

Fire's an integral part of all orchid species in Victoria. Mellblom's spider orchid is one of the more threatened species that we're dealing with. Its numbers go to as low that we knew of, as low as six plants since we have come into Australia. And we've lost roughly a species or two every generation. So Europeans have had a significant impact on our environment.

So personally I feel that it's important that we place a value on them. If we don't place values on them and what the values are for the environment, well, then we're not doing ourselves justice.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Film - Malcolm McKinnon, 'A Measure of Fuel', 2010

Walking in the bush, if it crackles underfoot it's probably going to burn. That's the crackle test. The basic idea is that fires are dependent on fuel and that it's quite clear that if you reduce the amount of fuel, you reduce the intensity of fire.

After 1983, after the big fires, at the time I was actually teaching in a secondary school and I got a bit of an interest in, for a student project, measuring fuel. So we came out to some of these areas-- this is one of them, back in 1984-- and marked out one meter squares and multiple examples of that, scraped up all the leaves. So what you need to do is sort of go down to basically soil level and collect that up, dry it and weigh it.

So I first did that in 1984. And for areas like this, the fuel loads are around about 15 or 17 tons per hectare. So that's about one and a half or so kilograms per meter squared, which is a big garbage bag.

I guess one of the things that we often hear in the media is that one of the problems we have with fire is it's been so long since it was burnt that fuel's been accumulating all that time, over 20 years. In fact, what usually happens in these areas is that as fast as these leaves drop into the system and to pile up on the ground, through winter what we get is wetter soil, and we get a lot of fungi, and we get those little soil fauna, little gooby things. And basically, when it hits the ground, this sort of leaf and twigs and whatever starts to decompose.

So in fact, after a fire, or after the fuel's been removed, fuel accumulates very rapidly because leaves drop, twigs drop, and so on. Very soon though, after a year or so, as soon as these leaves start to rot down, the rate of the leaves dropping in equals the rate of decomposition. So it's only about, say, five years after you've burned that the fuel load stays just about constant.

And I've come back here to this site in 2007 and remeasured the fuel using the same methodology we used in 1984. So what's that, 20-odd years, 23 years later? And effectively, the fuel loads haven't changed over that time.

I think it is a bit of a cultural thing as much as it is a scientific thing or a fire management thing. Part of that story of whether we should be burning it perhaps translates into we should be actively managing everything. And maybe there are some people who think we don't need to actively manage everything in the same obvious, hands-on sort of way.

Film - Malcolm McKinnon, 'The Price of Paradise', 2010

My affinity towards the bush goes way back. And when it came to making a decision when we were getting married about where to live, when I came across this property it was a no brainer for me. It was something that I was comfortable in living in this sort of environment. It was a challenge for me to work with my wife and to design and build a house and live in harmony in the local environment.

When you look at an aerial photograph or satellite image, you actually realize how isolated this place is. Our nearest neighbor is over two kilometers away. And that means you can crank the music up pretty loud as long as we didn't disturb the wildlife.

[BIRDS CHIRPING]

One of the great memories I have of this place is coming down here on an afternoon, just watching the world go by. Being very, very quiet, and then a Lyrebird coming along not knowing I was present, bathing in front of me. And I was in awe of simple things in life.

[BIRDS CHIRPING]

When we moved in here, there was evidence that fire was part of the landscape. And you can actually see fire scars on the trees. So we knew that we were moving into an area that has had a history of fire. But I was willing to put up with that concern about living in a fire prone area because you're living in paradise, basically. That's a price you pay for living in paradise.

This is the location of where the house was. Whenever I come back here, I can view things in four dimensions. And what I mean by that is that it's not just the height, the width and the depth, it's also the fourth dimension being time. In my mind, I'm able to walk through that house every time I come here. That's frightening at times, actually.

There were very few items that actually survived the intensity of the fire. This is a fiberglass hammer, and this is what happens when a bush fire goes through. And here we have a nice sculpture. Unfortunately it's turned into a flytrap. But before it was a flytrap it used to be glass cookware, and that can normally withstand in excess of 1,000 degrees Celsius.

When Leeanne was learning how to do ceramics. She actually did the artwork on this. So each item, even though it may seem like rubbish, has a memory attached to it.

I've got no regrets in making a decision to live in this environment, nor do I have any problems with the way things panned out. But I don't think either myself or my wife have come to terms with the impact that this property has on us. So after a lot of soul searching, we actually said that, yes, we do want to live in this environment. We have to be able to come to terms with what transpired and how we move on from here.

Film - Malcolm McKinnon, 'Mark of Recovery', 2010

-When something unspeakable happens, there aren't words. And I guess that's why the image initially was so strong and very powerful. Because it certainly showed that blackness that we felt. But then that lovely green leaf that symbolized getting up and regrowing and doing what needed to be done at such a devastatingly sad time.

-I had never heard of [INAUDIBLE]. And when the [INAUDIBLE] actually happened, I was not even in Australia. And we came back maybe a week later. And the smell of smoke, getting off the plane, it was like bush fire smoke at the airport. The whole place was just so misty. And from that day forth, it always affected me.

And then meeting [INAUDIBLE], she was the person that just made it all such a reality. Like there's a person standing in front of me who has survived this. And I suppose that's why I wanted to help her out and everybody else in Flowerdale.

-I had no idea it would be this many. Odette organized bus loads of people to come. So it would  be like 12 people one week, 10 people the next week. And it would just be like every week, just tattooing more and more people.

-It certainly wasn't a project. It just happened organically. And clearly other people wanted their tattoo for all sorts of other reasons, probably. But for me, it was just a reminder and why I chose my arm was just so I could see it every day and just to be reminded how lucky I am.

To be reminded of the friends that I don't get to see anymore. And again, just because it was all about Flowerdale.

-The tattoo means such a lot. And I've never had a tattoo in my life. But I liked the idea of it, being a part of the community. And the rebirth after the devastation. And I'm terrified of needles, but I thought, I'm going to have one. And I'm just proud to be wearing this and it means life again.

-I guess now I've grown to love the black and the green. And when you live in this regrowth, you try and turn it into something positive and something strong and beautiful that will stay with you.

[MUSIC PLAYING]