In March 2019, bushfires in Bunyip State Park rocked the local community. The fires affected more than 15,000 hectares, including homes. Since then, the Bunyip Community Recovery Committee (BCRC) has backed various local programs to help improve community well-being and resilience.  

A key initiative of the Committee is the Building Indigenous Land and Fire Management project. The project explores how cultural burning methods could reduce the risk of bushfire in Cardinia Shire

Traditional knowledge helping modern land management 

This project offers valuable benefits by: 

• enabling the Bunurong Traditional Owners to measure and track the land and impacts post fires 
• supporting the ceremony of traditional cultural burning 
• encouraging people to learn about Indigenous culture 
• showing how cultural burning can reduce bushfire risk. 

This work highlights the Bunurong people and their connection to the land. By sharing Indigenous land management practices, such as cultural burning, we can help build resilience together. This approach also promotes inclusion. It brings local governments and Indigenous groups closer. Through this project, there has been an increasing sense of goodwill in the community. It enhances relationships, education and participation from local private landowners. 

Learning and adopting cultural burning 

The BCRC's Complex Fires and Recovery program manages this project. In 2019, the Preparing Australia Communities Program - Local (PACPL) awarded $296,320 in support. 

As the project comes to an end, there are great opportunities for he Bunurong Land Council to work with the region and land management agencies. 

Community participants in the project learned about fire ecology, natural species, as well as cultural burning. This offers exciting scope for cultural gardens and seed collection. 

Before this project, there were no Indigenous cultural burns in the region. The Bunurong Land Council are now creating a business plan for Indigenous land management.