One year after the major bushfires swept through the Monga National Park east of Braidwood.
Regrowth happening, tree ferns in gullies have done quite well, small grass trees OK, some lyre birds around - but not as many as prior to the fires?
Thousands of hectares of National Parks were burnt by wild bushfires in the summer of 2019-20. This left many trees in an unsafe condition - particularly those adjacent to roads and fire trails. Many damaged/unsafe trees were cut down before sections of the Parks were re-opened.
The following gallery of images was taken in the Morton National Park near Bundanoon in August 2020. The stumps are generally of quite small Banksia trees with thick bark. After rain and shortly after being cut down, some interesting textures were observed. Images by Peter Kneen - Artisan and Photography.
Whilst the effects on the landscape of the bushfires are widespread and depressing to view, there can be some new textures exposed on tree trunks that have lost their bark.
Many trunks were burnt out up the core of the tree leaving a relatively thin outer shell.
Some trunks when wet by heavy rain brought out some beautifil grain patterns and colours.
The images below were taken in March 2020 after access to the Echo Point and Bonnie View lookouts near Bundanoon were opened on March 7 2020.
They are the result of several side by side handheld images stiched together in Photoshop.
The valley is the Bundanoon Creek which flows into the Shoalhaven River. Down in the valley there was some unburnt patches. Higher up the fire raced from ridge to ridge as can be seen from the burnt brown coloured areas. Six months later and the brown areas across the other side of the gorge are not so obvious as very green grass has started to grow back as well as regrowth on many of the trees still standing.
There are other articles with close up images of the areas of the Morton National Park that was burnt. And I will add some more interesting infrared photos.
This was one of hundreds of extensive bushfires that ravaged the eastern side of Australia in the summer of 2019-20
It started over 100 kms south from where these images were taken and took about two months to reach the northern border of the Morton National Park near Bundanoon. Initially it was part of the Currowan Fire. The first gallery below has a number of landscape orientated photographs.
The following gallery has portrait orientated images. They show several grass trees that seem to have escaped the worst of the fire.