"The past is never fully gone. It is absorbed into the present and the future. It stays to shape what we are and what we do."
Sir William Deane, Governor-General of Australia, Inaugural Vincent Lingiari Memorial Lecture, August 1996.

Aerial Ignition

Barry Marsden (bio)

 

Barry Marsden was the lead player in the development of the new aerial ignition machines based on the "Premo Principle", and the Aerial Drip Torches described in this article. Bryan Rees played a key role in field testing the "Premo" machine.

From the late 1960s, aerial ignition became a very important part of Victorian forestry operations. Initially, fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters were used for fuel reduction burning, with helicopters also playing a key role in large-scale backburning during fire suppression operations. Eventually, helicopters also came to be important in igniting regeneration burns following timber harvesting.

 

 
Later developments of both Aerial Ignition Machines and Aerial Drip Torches have continued to use the principles established in the first machines described in this article. Annual aerial ignition training programs were conducted under the direction of Bryan Rees, Aviation Officer.