Couldn't talk yesterday. spent New Year's Eve and Day camping by our local
lake water skiing, not that I can water ski, but I get to ride as observer in
the ski boat, an old classic Havilan red wine colour boat with
a chevy 350 V8. With the temperatures on New Year's Day in excess of 40
degrees C (about 105F) in the shade I got a touch of the sun, otherwise known
as heatstroke and was rather ill yesterday.

Late on New Year's Day I could see a fire in the nearby Pilliga Forest.
Having grown up with this native pine forest this was a normal thing to see.
But I find the fires are rather sad and distressing because of the
irresponsible media coverage. Basically, this is a media event orchestrated
by the Carr Labor Government in NSW. The access journalists are given
to news is through the centralised official Government controlled fire
authority and the Government is feeding all sorts of rubbish to the press. It
is an election year, what can you expect? (If this sounds cynical you haven't
met or had to work with this cynical Government.)

A couple of years ago I had to go and fight a fire in the Pilliga Forest which
was burning on a hundred mile front. Fire crews had already been
brought in from interstate and a big media carry-on was orchestrated by the
State Government saying how they were acting to stop this fire. Anyway, these
interstate fire fighters sat around for a week, not being able to move
without word from the centralised command in Sydney, some 360 miles away and
on the coast. This fire was well west of the Great Dividing Ranges on the
edge of the NSW outback and they had little knowledge in Sydney of local
conditions. It was like fighting fire by bureaucracy which is not the way to
control a fire in this sort of country and so the fire grew bigger.

Finally, Sydney decided they needed more help and called in the local bush
fire brigades. We turned up about mid-day, sat around for a couple of hours
chatting to the imported crews and it very soon became obvious that these men
had no experience with this sort of fire. The biggest fire they had ever
fought was a 20 acre grass fire. This was a fire burning in several thousand
square miles of pine forest.

The locals very quickly broke rank with the centralised command and went out
with our one inch hoses and small petrol motors to put this fire under
control, using the big fire tankers to top up our small tanks since, to be
honest, we would rather they left the area when the fire approached. You get
use to seeing a 30 to 50 foot high fire raging towards you and you know the
fire will stop when it hits the fire break and you know how to keep yourself
safe in these conditions and side step the main fire front. Having to worry
about inexperienced fire fighters could be dangerous.

Once the fire hits the break it will jump it in places and you then attempt
to put out any of these small fires that jump the break. You don't always
succeed, of course. So you go to the next break and begin back
burning, except we were prevented from doing this by the central command in
Sydney and again the fire got away. Once darkness fell one of the onsite fire
chiefs started running around like a chicken with no head calling for local
knowledge. We ignored him and when he left the area began back burning. At
about midnight we got our section of the fire under control and went home.
(The imported crews are all men, btw. The locals crews are both women and
men.)

The only people who stayed with us as the first of the big fire approached
were three local journalists with their shorthand note pad, Nikons and
Betacam. They let us play with their cameras while the flames were still some
way off. The imported crews were under strict instructions not to talk to any
journalists, which I learned while chatting with them. One of my local crew
piped up that I was a journalist. End of conversation. The national media
information is orchestrated by publicity officers known to be either
supporters or members of the NSW Labor Party. It is standard cybernetic
social control theory right out of the pages of JG Ballard _Cocaine Nights_
and Norbert Wiener, for the media angle.

A lot of the fires burning in NSW are the result of lightening strikes, as is
the local fire. The fires which have been lit have been quite often done by
young teenagers, a disaffected minority in NSW. The kids are doing what the
social engineering of the government is inciting, in effect. In the final
analysis the Carr Labor Government as good as lit those fires but then that
is the beauty of cybernetic social engineering. You can always deny
responsibility and blame a scapegoat.

Anyway, Iike all experienced local firefighters, I refuse to go fight the
current Pilliga Forest fire under the sort of bureaucratic procedures set in
place. I have two young Pee Wee chicks (black and white native birds, a
smaller version of a magpie) to hand raise. They were blown from their nest
in the storm that caused the fire and require feeding almost every hour.

best wishes

Chris Jones