S8 Ep266: INDIGENOUS FIRE MANAGEMENT AND THE HISTORY OF AUSTRALIAN WILDFIRES Colleague Danielle Clode. In this interview, Danielle Clode discusses the historical context of Australian wildfires, noting that early European explorers like Captain Cook frequently obse

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John Batchelor

Society & Culture, Arts, News, Books

4.5 • 2.8K Ratings

🗓️ 30 December 2025

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

INDIGENOUS FIRE MANAGEMENT AND THE HISTORY OF AUSTRALIAN WILDFIRES Colleague Danielle Clode. In this interview, Danielle Clode discusses the historical context of Australian wildfires, noting that early European explorers like Captain Cook frequently observed fires along the coast, which they often viewed merely as signs of habitation. Clode explains that Indigenous Australians practiced "fire stick farming" for over 60,000 years, using fire as a sophisticated tool for hunting, signaling, and vegetation management—a nuance missed by early settlers who used fire indiscriminately to clear land. The segment highlights the difference between indigenous land management, which created park-like forests, and the catastrophic fires that have occurred since colonization, such as the "Black Thursday" fires of 1851. NUMBER 1

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0:28.3	Please gamble responsibly.
0:33.4	This is CBS Eye on the World with John Batchelor.
0:40.1	Here's John Batchelor.
0:42.2	It is 1770. We're with Captain Cook off the coast of what will become Australia.
0:48.6	The captain records in his log.
0:51.8	He sees a smoking cape.
0:55.2	This moment in history is a way of talking about a phenomenon that is worldwide and that
1:02.2	challenges civilization in the northern hemisphere, Greece, Spain, Italy, in the southern
1:10.0	hemisphere, especially Australia, but Argentina and Chile,
1:14.6	wildfires, they're called in California, bushfires are called in Australia.
1:19.6	A new book that is an old book, a book that is necessary now and was necessary when it was
1:26.1	written a dozen years ago, a future in flames.
1:29.6	Daniel Claude is the author. Daniel is very generous to come back after I interviewed her
1:35.8	about her wonderful new book, Cowalas. And in the course of that conversation, we talked about
1:41.0	the horror of a wildfire joke with koala because koalas cling to their source of energy,
1:47.6	which is a eucalyptus tree.
	...

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