Introduction
In my book “Fires, Farms and Forests”, I dedicated a chapter to outline the construction of a horse-drawn wooden tramway in the mid-late 1870s. The chapter focused on the monumental task of constructing 74 kilometres of a new line through some sections of dense rainforest, all cleared by hand.
As I wrote in the book, I believe it is the longest wooden tramway built in the world.
As we travelled around Australia, I was amazed at how many towns we came across that had shifted for whatever reason. While I already knew about a few, I had no idea many towns were forced to move.
Probably one of the best-known is Eucla on the Nullarbor Plain. The Eucla Telegraph Station opened in 1877 and helped link Western Australia with the rest of Australia and the world.… Read more
“And of course there were ignitions by the fistful. Lightning kindled some fires, but most emanated from a register of casual incendiarists that reads like a roster of rural Australia: settlers, graziers, prospectors, splitters, mineworkers, arsonists, loggers and mill bushmen, hunters looking to drive game, fishermen hoping to open up the scrub around the streams, foresters unable to contain controlled burns, bush residents seeking to ward off wildfire by protective fire, travellers and transients of all kinds.
