This afternoon I walked up to the top of one of the hills at the camp to get a better idea of the fire damage. All around there are sections that are completely burnt out, and each hill that I could see was the same.

Controlled burning is good for planned regeneration of areas - but not out of control fire across such huge areas of the reserve at this time of the year. Being so dry there was already limited food and little water, but now the grass is completely burnt, so the animals are going to be very grateful when the rains come again. Unusually for this time of year we did have a little rain one day last week, (during the kid's bushcamp), and as a result already new nutritious green shoots are sprouting up in places.

A huge benefit of the fire is that hopefully millions of ticks will have been fried to a crisp -having had tick bite fever back in April, I am even less of a tick fan than I ever was, and anything that reduces their number and spread is a good thing!