Setting up a bushfire

We drove up to the Hills on Saturday morning to help Ian’s mum and dad with their bushfire. The place were they live, up in the Hills is really lovely! They have a big house in the middle of the bush/forest. You can’t hear any other neighbours nor see any other houses. When I walk around the property I see all sorts of different wild flowers and plants I have never seen before – it is really a nice place.
Once every year they burn off half an acre of their 5 acre property in order to prevent bush fires from reaching the house. So every half an acre gets burned once every 10 years and if there is a “real” bush fire in summer the change of reaching the house is smaller.
First Ian’s dad had to get a fire permit for this day. Then we were armed with hoses, watering cans and water canisters with a little hose and hand-operated pump and Ian’s dad lit up a couple of matches to get the fire going. And our job was basically to watch the fire and prevent it from going up the trees [once the tree tops are burning the fire will spread to the other surrounding tree tops and we can’t control it anymore] or spreading to other areas where it shouldn’t go to.
It was very interesting to see all the little creatures, bugs, beetles, ants and spiders running away from the fire. This was actually the first time I wasn’t afraid of these spiders because I knew that they were much more afraid than I was. And there were magpies everywhere hunting for these running insects – it must have been a real feast for them. They even picked little creatures out of the burnt black areas – they really must like BBQ’s :-)
But I can now say that I appreciate the work of “real” fire fighters much more. I mean we just had to control a very small and slowly burning fire and it wasn’t that warm that day…. but fighting a really big bush fire in summer time when it is 30 – 40°C is something complete different.