Karmactive Staff
Govind Tekale
A massive fire burned through northern Australia in 2023, destroying an area three times bigger than the United Kingdom. To understand this scale: the burned area of 84 million hectares is larger than the entire state of New South Wales.
“The scale of these fires is hard to comprehend,” says research presented at the International Fire Behaviour and Fuels Conference in Canberra. The fires consumed 84 million hectares, making them eight times larger than the Black Summer bushfires of 2019-20 that made global headlines.
The fires moved with shocking speed. Flames raced across 18 million hectares of the Barkly, Tanami and Great Sandy Deserts in just a few weeks between September and October. This rapid spread through the desert regions showed the extraordinary power of these fires.
What caused such massive fires? The answer lies in rain and grass. Recent wet seasons led to thick grass growth across the deserts. When this grass dried out, it became the perfect fuel for fires. Lightning strikes then ignited this dry grass, creating fast-moving flames that emergency services struggled to control.
Tony Fuller, chief fire control officer at Bushfires NT, warns of another big fire year ahead. “The summer of 2023-24 was very wet across the Barkly and Tanami regions,” he says, indicating conditions that could lead to extensive fires in the coming season.
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But there’s hope in ancient knowledge. Indigenous Australians have managed these lands for thousands of years using controlled burning. Their method creates a patchwork of burned and unburned areas, like cutting up a giant landscape into sections and managing them at different times. This prevents fires from spreading too far.
Indigenous ranger groups showed how effective this approach can be. In 2022-23, they travelled 58,000 kilometres, conducting controlled burns. These controlled fires created barriers that helped stop the big fires from spreading even further.
The most dangerous fires hit near Tennant Creek, a remote town in the Northern Territory. These fires only stopped when they reached areas that had burned four years earlier, proving how previous burns can protect communities.
The solution requires both old wisdom and new resources. While Indigenous burning techniques work well, they need proper funding and support. Current desert fire management lacks enough money and people to cover such vast areas effectively.
This matters for everyone, not just those living in the desert. These fires affect the natural environment and can threaten towns. They also show how important it is to manage the land properly before fires start, rather than trying to fight them after they’re burning.
As northern Australia heads into another fire season, the message is clear: preventing huge fires requires year-round work, traditional knowledge, and proper support. Without this, Australia risks seeing more record-breaking fire seasons in the years ahead.
