When Michael-Shawn Fletcher stood at the edge of Croajingolong National Park, he wasn’t just looking at trees—he was reading a 1,000-year-old story written in soil, charcoal, and eucalyptus. Buried beneath a quiet lakebed are clues to one of Australia’s deepest environmental truths: that the land was never wild, but carefully cared for—until colonization changed everything.
For centuries, the Gunaikurnai people shaped this landscape using cultural burning—small, cool fires that cleared underbrush and kept forests open. These practices weren’t random; they were precise, seasonal, and life-sustaining. But after British colonization disrupted these traditions, the forest began to change. Without regular burns, vegetation thickened, fuel built up, and what was once open woodland transformed into dense, fire-prone forest.
A new study led by Fletcher and the Gunaikurnai Land and Waters Corporation, published in Nature, analyzed sediment from Purghagoolah Lake. By studying layers of pollen, charcoal, and erosion patterns going back a millennium, they found that before colonization, fire temperatures were low and eucalypts covered far less ground. After colonization, everything shifted: eucalypt cover surged fourfold, soils eroded more, and high-intensity wildfires became the norm.
The most striking finding? These changes happened long before modern climate change took hold. That means today’s wildfire crisis didn’t start with hotter summers alone—it started when people stopped listening to the land. "When Country is cared for, climate does not dictate wildfire," says Fletcher. For thousands of years, dangerous fire seasons came and went, yet catastrophic blazes were rare—because the landscape was managed.
GunaiKurnai elder Uncle Russell Mullett puts it plainly: fire, or towera, is part of their identity. "Not treating country with towera, country becomes extremely dangerous for GunaiKurnai, animals and plants." The research now backs what Indigenous communities have always known—fire isn’t the enemy; neglect is.
This study also challenges the myth of “wilderness.” Croajingolong has long been called pristine, untouched. But the data shows otherwise: its current state is a product of colonial disruption, not natural balance. And it’s that very transformation that now makes it one of southeastern Australia’s most burned regions.
The path forward, researchers say, lies in restoration—not just of the land, but of relationships. Returning stewardship to Traditional Owners and reviving cultural burning could reduce fuel loads, lower fire intensity, and bring resilience back to the ecosystem. It’s not about going backward. It’s about moving forward with knowledge that’s already thousands of years old.