NEXT BIG THING: Cool fire – unlocking old burning secrets

Sediment core samples paint a picture of the healthy relationship between humans, vegetation and fire across millennia in Australia. By Michael-Shawn Fletcher

It’s field-based research that I love. Getting out on Country. My parents used to remark that as a kid no toy of mine ever lasted a week before I’d be pulling it apart and trying to put it back together. I just love knowing how things work, and that extends into the world around us – trying to understand how our environments work, and what the dynamics are.

What we see from our work is that there are very few, if any, parts of Australia that could be called wilderness. Sure, there are rainforest pockets – Aboriginal people didn’t burn every inch of the continent, but worked to protect some areas and manage others. This modern notion of wilderness denies the management of Country by Aboriginal custodians for all those thousands of years. And as we are seeing, if we remove that Aboriginal management, ecosystems collapse.

There’s a growing realisation that we need this Aboriginal knowledge and information if we are to operate sustainably on Country – that this ancient know-how needs to be reawakened.

For the full story on Michael-Shawn Fletcher's unique coring devices and how he is using science to back up and support traditional knowledge, head below to Cosmos 98 | Beyond the Palaeo