From the Ashes
Aussie plants that grow in fire-prone places do a pretty amazing job of regenerating after a fire. It's the phoenix story, life arising from the ashes.
​
I love watching the bush come back. At first, you need to look carefully to see the signs of recovery. Things really get going once there's been enough rain to soak deep into the soil. This lets the plants know that they have the moisture they need to give it a go above-ground.
​
Click the links below to see pics of the bush coming back after bushfires in 2019.
Girraween National Park, burnt February 2019, photographed early March 2020, 13 months post-fire.
Girraween is one of my favourite places, with its towering granite rocks, cool clear creeks, and fabulous diversity of native shrubs and herbs.
In 2019, most of Girraween burnt in an out-of-season bushfire, after months of drought. Another 10 months of severe drought followed. Finally, in the summer of 2019-20, it rained!
​
See what we found when we visited in March 2020.
Broadwater State Forest and western outskirts of Stanthorpe, burnt September 2019, photographed early March 2020, 6 months post-fire.
Stanthorpe, 30 minutes’ drive north of Girraween on the New England Highway and surrounded by bush, was one of the first towns threatened by fire in the spring of 2019.
Broadwater State Forest sits to the west of the town, and that’s where I initially went to check out the regeneration six months later.