The fires were eight times larger than the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires that affected 10 million hectares in southeast Australia. Research shows that the 2023 fires burned over 84 million hectares of desert and savannah in northern Australia. This is larger than the whole of New South Wales and more than three times the size of the United Kingdom. The speed at which these fires spread was also astonishing. In just a few weeks of September and October, more than 18 million hectares burned across the Barkly, Tanami, and Great Sandy deserts of the Northern Territory and Western Australia. This research into the 2023 fires was presented at the International Fire Behaviour and Fuels Conference in Canberra, where the scale of these fires, why they occurred, and how fires could be better managed to protect remote but ecologically and culturally important regions of Australia were discussed. The main driver behind these fires was the large fuel loads, as wet growing seasons are part of the natural cycle. Although climate change can make fire conditions more extreme, in this case, it was not the primary cause. Efforts have begun to bring good fire management back into these landscapes in a coordinated and large-scale way. For thousands of years, Indigenous people managed fuel loads across these vast landscapes. The sophisticated use of fire in Australia’s highly flammable tropical savannas has been recognized as the world’s best wildfire management system. Traces of this long history of traditional fire practice can be seen in aerial photos of desert Country from the 1940s. Research analyzing these photos has shown extensive and complex “fuel mosaics” spread like patchwork quilts over vast parts of the WA deserts. The term mosaic refers to having many patches of vegetation of different ages, some recently burnt with sparse cover, some long unburnt with old, large and connected spinnifex clumps and small trees. This provides habitat for a broad range of animals, because different species prefer different amounts of ground cover. It also hinders the spread of fire because areas subject to more recent fire have insufficient fuel to carry new fires for many years. In 2022-23, Indigenous ranger groups conducted extensive burning operations, which were astoundingly effective. Even though large fires still ripped through these deserts in 2023, by mapping the fuel reduction fires and overlaying the spread of subsequent wildfires, it was clear that these burns limited the extent of the fires. The fires of greatest concern to government agencies were the Barkly fires that threatened the town of Tennant Creek. These fires were large and fast-moving, feeding off fuel in a vast area of unmanaged country east of the town. Here, a lack of land management increased disaster risk. The summer of 2023-24 was very wet across the Barkly and Tanami regions in the NT. Bushfires NT Chief Fire Control Officer Tony Fuller has warned of another significant fire year to come as we head into the northern dry season of 2024.