"I'm being as provocative as possible to try and wake everybody up to say, 'Look, what is currently happening is not sustainable. We have to think outside the square,'" Dr Bowman said.

He says the short-term programs designed to address Australia’s serious problems with bushfires and invasive species are piecemeal, costly and ineffective.

For example, he says, they are not succeeding in controlling the invasive gamba grass that leads to frequent intense fires in Australia's north.

"It's out of control," he said. "Last year we had a fire in the outback in Central Australia the size of Tasmania. These things are very bad."

While there were indeed massive fires in Central Australia, they were fueled by a couple of good seasons and had nothing to do with gamba grass which doesn't grow down there.

The biggest problem with gamba grass in the Territory is that the NT Government took far too long to overcome cattle industry lobbying and only declared it a weed long after it was completely out of control. NRETAS Weeds Branch now supplies herbicide and loans spray equipment to people in the greater Darwin rural area to try to get rid of gamba grass, but far too few people are taking advantage of this. I even had one land owner tell me that people in her area did nothing about gamba grass on their properties because they couldn't afford to, so maybe Weeds Branch need to advertise their program a little better. They also need to carry out annual block inspections and issue information packs to reluctant land holders, and maybe prosecute one or two recalcitrants. Bushfires NT do this with fire breaks and they are also an NRETAS department.

Bushfires NT have supplied spray equipment to volunteer Brigades in the Vernon Region. This is fitted to Grass Fire Units so that they can be used to spray weeds without putting herbicide into the water tanks, or running it through the pumps. Some Brigades are using this equipment to good effect, but not all. Just driving around the area is evidence of this.

I personally spray in my area using a backpack sprayer. I do along the road verges and inside local vacant crown land blocks, and also inside one or two privately owned vacant blocks - quite illegally too, I would imagine. This is only my third season of spraying, but results have been spectacular. Areas that were once heavily infested with gamba grass are now regenerated with native species and this year's spraying was very easy, mostly having to catch new growth along the roadway. Unfortunately, I also have areas re-infested from blocks where little, or nothing is being done to control gamba grass. I will enter unfenced, unoccupied blocks to spray, but won't climb through a fence or enter any that are obviously inhabited. 

Because my previous areas are now very much under control I have extended operations to other vacant crown land blocks further afield.

When I first started spraying in the local area I had people tell me that I shouldn't be doing it because "it wasn't my responsibility". Well, I made it my responsibility by working through Bushfires NT with vacant crown land blocks and by obtaining approval from the Litchfield Council to spray along road verges.

Others have told me that their gamba grass is in difficult country and too hard to get at, or that it's in too dense infestations. My answer to the first is to get a sense of adventure, wear appropriate protective clothing, hydrate before starting and carry drinking water. Don't worry too much about snakes as the cane toads have wiped out of most of them. With dense outcrops I just spray all around the perimeter in as far as possible and then return in a week or so when that has died and collapsed, allowing access to spray in further, then repeat until it's all done. You also need to return to previously sprayed areas to get all the new growth and anything you may have missed the first time. It's also most important to get your spraying done before the gamba grass flowers and sets seed.

Now, I'm a septuagenarian and if I can do that, so can you. If more people got off their backsides and actually did something instead of moaning about it and making excuses we might even get rid of the stuff - without elephants.

Frank Dunstan

February 2012

“Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential.”                

Winston Churchill