When this summer's bushfires burnt through more than 200 thousand hectares of national park in Western Victoria, hundreds of fire-fighters were deployed to tackle the blazes. And for the first time, a small specialist Indigenous team was closely involved in the fire-fighting strategy. The results have been encouraging and authorities hope it will become the norm in fire-services around Australia.
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00:00Surrounded by blackened tree husks, Jake Goodes and Damien Scurry fear the worst as they approach
00:17the Billimena Rock Art Shelter.
00:19When you look around, it's just total devastation, you just go, how?
00:24Nuclear bomb went off in here, that's what happened.
00:26But amazingly, the art is unscathed.
00:29Wow, how does that not have a scurry on it, like a mark, nothing?
00:35Wow.
00:37It's an encouraging start to the cultural surveys the two men are carrying out,
00:41after bushfires that decimated more than 80% of the Grampians' Garryward National Park,
00:47where for the first time, on-country experts were officially included in the firefighting effort.
00:53We've been able to, like I said, gather and protect a lot of those sites when time has
00:58allowed us to do that, but also, I guess, provide a lot of, I guess, direction and
01:04support to the operational, I guess, people on the ground around where sites might exist,
01:10why we need to protect it.
01:12The specialised team did delicate manual labour, wrapping big trees in sheets of silver foil,
01:18removing smaller vegetation by hand and pruning shrubs.
01:22Guys put some Thermaguard around it to protect this tree.
01:25It's practically insulation with a foil coating on it that repels heat.
01:30It's only sort of new technology stuff at the moment, but we definitely see the benefits of
01:36using it in the protection of culturally modified trees or scar trees.
01:41Using any kind of heavy machinery in here would be devastating,
01:45particularly because of the art site and the landscape.
01:48100 kilometres away at the Little Desert National Park, more than 93,000 hectares were burned.
01:57Seeing the damage these bushfires have caused in the Little Desert National Park
02:02makes you realise just how important this work is in protecting the region's cultural heritage.
02:08These on-country experts hope this fire season, while devastating,
02:12can become a blueprint for firefighting strategy.
02:15The first time in 20 years working for, you know,
02:18not just Parks Victoria but Fire Forest Management Victoria,
02:21that I've got to do this in such a big way with a big team.
02:25I'm going to go along this escarpment here.
02:28Authorities say culturally sensitive firefighting is still
02:31highly misunderstood among Australian firefighters.
02:34One day I hope to see them taking lead roles in our fire operations,
02:38not just be a cultural heritage department as a bolt-on to our overall operations,
02:45but really integrated and lead what we do and how we do it.
02:53It's hard to watch the landscape burn, but, you know, to be out there, you know,
02:59to be the first responders, it feels, you know, I guess sort of empowering.
03:05The future of firefighting, using lessons from the past.