Life after bushfire: Anakie and the Brisbane Ranges National Park
Life after bushfire: Anakie and the Brisbane Ranges National Park
18 September 2006
published by www.abc.net.au
Australia — It was a bushfire that raged for almost a week, incinerating thousands of hectares of public and private land but miraculously only destroying a couple of houses, leaving no fatalities. The January bushfires that began with a lightning strike deep inside the Brisbane Ranges National Park swept in and out of the town of Anakie, with a windchange that pushed the firefront around and threatened to also wipe out the nearby towns of Staughton Vale, Stieglitz and Maude.
Nearly eight months after the flames were controlled by a massive response of firefighters and doused with a timely downpour of rain, the region is struggling back to normality; the Brisbane Ranges National Park, home to a fifth of Victoria’s flora species as well as one of the largest koala populations in the state is seeing signs of life return with Spring.
Late winter rains have given an extra nudge to the park’s ecosystem, promising an abundance of wildflowers, a return of the native birds, mammals and marsupials and an extra special bonus for backpackers, bushwalkers and daytrippers who make the journey.
With most of the National Park now reopened to the public, and the local volunteer group the Friends of the Brisbane Ranges building up to a special series of tours and events celebrating the wildflowers of the Brisbane Ranges, take your own virtual journey through the Brisbane Ranges National Park as it renews andregenerates.
Image gallery of the Brisbane Ranges National Park and the nearby town of Anakie showing the recovery from the massive bushfires of January2006:
http://www.abc.net.au/ballarat/stories/s1743448.htm
