Melbourne, Thursday 2 February 1939

[Mr. Gowans] What is your full name?
Peter O'Mara and I am a timber contractor and timber getter at Noojee. I have been so engaged for the past 40 years.

...You had two houses burnt in the recent fires?
Yes.

You have heard… about the steps that had been taken in the State Forest areas around here, in order to make the forest safer. Do you think the Forests Commission has done everything it could have done in that direction?
I think the Forests Commission is a death trap to the young timber that is in the Victorian State Forests, the people that are in the forests and the towns joined on to them.

In what way?
It is a nightmare to the settlers, the graziers, and the timber workers. The Forests Commission allows this forest to get into such a state with inflammable material on the floor, that they have to cut roads and tracks to get through the forest. That did not exist in the graziers' time, or the aboriginals' time.

You could ride a horse through anywhere, but at the present time you cannot do so. Those tracks have proved a failure; the patch-burning has proved a failure, because here is the forest all burnt out. There has been nothing gained by the money that has been spent in cutting those tracks and doing patch burning.

The aboriginals and the graziers are the men who grew this timber that the sawmillers had been cutting for 50 years. They grew the timber that was burnt on January 13th. They kept the floor of the forest clear, yet they could not have destroyed the seedlings because all this timber has grown.

What makes you think they kept the forest clean?
There was a fern tree growing in my timber country. The fern-tree is a tree that reads more plainly to the bush-men, its age, more than any other tree growing in the forest. The marks were down only half way to the bottom of the tree. I counted the rings down from the top for a number of feet, and I measured the balance of the trunk of the tree.

I reckoned up the age of the tree from those measurements, and it read 430 years. Looking back, that tree must have been preserved for at least 300 years by the aboriginal. The grazier then took control of the forest and he must have preserved the life of that tree for nearly 100 years. The forest was burnt in 1926, and that tree was scorched very badly; but on the 13th January 1939 that tree was burnt to the ground.

The timber was of no value to the aboriginal, but he kept the floor of the forest clear so that he could spear kangaroo and wallaby, and could travel about at night time. The same thing applies to the grazier; the timber was of no value to him.

His policy was to burn early in the spring, so he could get sweet grass for his cattle and herbs in the autumn and winter. If the seasons were such that he could not burn early in the spring, he fell back to the autumn burning.

A severe fire in the forest was no good to the grazier, as the feed would not grow for 12 months. However, it is unthinkable that any intelligent person would think of lighting a fire in the hot periods to roast his cattle on the hoof.

[Mr. O'Mara recommends 'burning the forest in the autumn if it will stand burning', i.e. not the ash forests - which will not stand firing' - but all the other forests around them.]

Is there anything else you wish to put forward for the assistance of the Commission?
I would like to put this suggestion forward - I am not speaking against any officer of the Forests Commission.

I think they are a fine body of men and that they kept to the letter of the Forests Commission policy - but I think that policy is altogether wrong. I think there are too many young men coming into the forests, with a box that carries the fore bug. They are city men but they burn tracks and breaks without practical experience.

Many of the officers are good men, but there are many of the others who are only city men. I think before a man is given that fire bug to use, it should be well proved that he has had years of experience in the forest. I do not think any young man should be given that power.

I do not think any young man should be put at the head, or have anything to do with the head of the Victorian State Forests unless he is a practical bushman, and has been for many years.

[The Commissioner] You would be in favour of taking the Forests Commission out of the forest and putting in a tribe of blackfellows to look after it?
No, I would not. I am in favour...

I wish to accentuate the fact that I speak in jest; you are not being rebuked or anything of the sort.
- I can understand that. I am strongly in favour of not putting a man in the ash forests unless he has years and years of experience in the forest, and has all the necessary credentials.

I think that is pretty sound advice.

Read more about how indigenous Aboriginals managed bushfires in the Aftermath Section