Bushfire impacts up-close at Walker Swamp
The birds eye view that we’ve shared in the previous story is a great way to see how and where the fire spread through the landscape, but what did we discover when we went for a closer look on the ground?

The sheds
If you look closely above, you might be able to see the very first place we checked, in the centre of the image.
We’re extremely grateful to the DEECA Forest Fire Management crews and CFA volunteers who managed to get a control line in place using our access track, to prevent the fire from spreading all the way through this pocket of bush south of Lynchs Crossing Rd, which saved our sheds. In the photo below you wouldn’t know there had even been a fire.
However, if we head back up the access track a short distance, you can see how hot the fire was in this area of heathy woodland – illustrating just how important the control line was for preventing the spread of the fire.
The grand old Red Gum trees
As we headed out to the floodplain areas, the first thing that stood out to me was the loss of some of the grand old Red Gum trees, where fire had entered the base of their trunks and caused the trees to break apart, and then partly or fully collapse under their own weight.



Unfortunately one particular tree that I am very fond of was lost, growing in the bed of a small backwater swamp that only receives water when Walker Swamp fills, and pushes water south of Lynchs Crossing Road. As you can see below, the view over this wetland won’t ever be quite be the same…
While it is an incredible shame to lose any old trees, I also must say that it could have been so much worse – because fortunately most of our grand old Red Gums have survived with only minor charring around their bases.
The fences
We’re still assessing our fences, but from what we have reviewed so far, it is now apparent that a significant amount of our fencing around the southern portion of the Reserve has been either completely burned, partially burned or heat-damaged in some way.
Some examples are shown below.



The weather station
We’re happy to report that although it is currently offline, our weather station did survive, despite the grass burning out from underneath it. As you’ll see below, Lachie gave it the quick once-over and confirmed that it appeared to be working. Assuming that all the data is intact, the air temperature reading as the fire passed through this location is something we’ll have to check!
The floodplains
The southern part of the reserve at Walker Swamp contains large former blue-gum plantation areas, which were established around 20 years ago in, what at the time were, artificially drained floodplains. These areas are still a work in progress from an environmental perspective, with our initial focus on treating coppicing (re-shooting) blue gum stumps, which was ongoing at the time of the fire. Eventually, once the stumps break down, we also hope to level the parallel mounds that the trees were planted into all those years ago, which continue to persist.
The fire passed through most of these areas with varying degrees of intensity.

As we zoom in on one of these areas, shown below, you can see how prominent the blue gum mounds and stumps are – and this also helps to explain why the mounds present an ongoing issue in a floodplain, where they can impact on the way water sits and flows through the landscape.

The other thing you will notice in the image above is how many of the blue-gum stumps were burned, both dead and coppicing.
This is one impact of the fire that we can live with, because it may have actually done us a favour in possibly killing some areas of remaining coppice and helping to accelerate the process of the stumps breaking down. This will make it easier when, subject to funding, we are in a position to proceed with the mound-levelling works. In an ideal world, we’re hoping to tackle this before the next flood occurs, which in turn will improve the quality of post-fire wetland habitat recovery.
For our many supporters out there, I hope this quick overview of how things are looking on the ground is reassuring, given how much more severe the impacts could have been.
Please be aware that we won’t be hosting visitors at Walker Swamp for a little while, as we await completion of dangerous tree assessments, fire break remediation and other response works.
However, if you wish to support NGT’s post-fire recovery works at Walker Swamp, or our monitoring of the post-fire ecological response, we’d certainly be grateful for your support.
You can make a donation by clicking the button below. Other donation methods are listed towards the end of the donation page on the NGT website.