The Otway Fly Tree Top Walk - Great Ocean Road, Victoria, Australia

Bushfires are a natural part of the Australian landscape. Before Aboriginal settlement about 40,000 years ago, fires would have been the result of lightning strike and the last volcanic eruptions.

Aborigines used fire, particularly in grasslands and grassy woodlands, to flush game, provide green grass to attract kangaroos and emus, and to better see approaching people.

But the Otways are unlikely to have been burnt this way, and in much of the wet Sclerophyll forest, the incidents of fire may have been 400 years ormore apart.

After Europeans arrived, fires became more frequent. Deliberate burns that escape, accidental fires and arson all contribute to the fire regime that now exists.

The Otway Ranges have a dreadful history of fires since Black Thursday in 1851. Big fires were recorded in different parts of the Otway forests in 1886, 1898, 1919, 1926, 1939, 1951 and Ash Wednesday 1983.

The 1939 fire missed the Beech Forest area, and there have been no serious fires here in the last 80 years or more.

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