Hunter Local Land Services NSW has teamed up with the Centre for Advanced Training Systems (ATS) and local Aboriginal Elders to educate the community about traditional land management, including cultural burning.

Passionate about supporting Aboriginal Elders in sharing their ecological knowledge with the younger members of their community, Hunter Local Land Services approached ATS to explore the possibility of creating an interactive program to increase awareness about cultural burning. 

Cultural burning refers to the traditional Aboriginal practice of using burning methods to improve the health of the land and its people.

It can include burning or the prevention of burning to improve the health of specific native plants and animals in bushland. The relevance of these approaches have been highlighted by the recent catastrophic bushfires.

Speaking about the project, Senior Land Service Officer Toby Whaleboat said the project stemmed from a desire to answer questions from the community.

“We see the project as important because there has been increased interest from the wider community about cultural burns and how the techniques could better manage our landscapes,” he said.

“This project will assist in increasing the awareness of cultural burns and suggesting how we can work with and support our Aboriginal communities as they lead the way with cultural fire knowledge developed over thousands of years to assist the wider community to better understand and look after country.”

As the first step in the project, ATS members Dr Steven Maltby and Dr Murielle Kluge were recently hosted on-site in Blacksmiths by Kentan Proctor, on behalf of the Bahtabah Local Aboriginal Land Council landowners.

While on site, they captured images and video to document the effects of a burn conducted in 2019, and were informed of the logistics for a planned future burn.

The planned burn will also be documented to include in the educational resource.

As the project continues, audio-visual content will be developed to be viewed in a virtual reality headset. This will provide an immersive and engaging educational tool that can be used to promote awareness and support training.

ATS Director Professor Rohan Walker said he looked forward to providing updates on the project as it progresses.

“We are proud to be helping Local Land Services to achieve their vision of transforming how we transfer and increase awareness around the practice of cultural burning,” he said.

“It is a fantastic initiative.”