What a day to pick to drive halfway across the country! Obviously, it wasn't your time as that car held out. My dad's cars were always breaking down. I can't imagine one would have ever made that kind of journey. A trip to Wales to see his parents usually meant a week of maintenance to make sure it got there.
Are the national parks the areas that used to be maintained by the aboriginal burnings?
At one time I'd have said extend the rainforests and you won't get the fires, but then Brazil...Who'd have thought a rainforest could burn.
I think the aboriginals used to burn wherever the bush was sufficiently dense, then harvest the wildlife fleeing from the flames.
Thousands of nomadic groups, each picking an area clean of edibles, then burning it to the ground, meant no one area was big enough, or had a chance to grow dense enough, to cause the kind of bedlam we're living through now.