We have eucalyptus trees here in Southern California. Some places they have taken them out and replaced them with less oily trees. Those babies go up like torches in a wildfire. I bet Australia has plenty of them — aren’t they native there??
Yep, they are - most Australian trees are eucalypts. You obviously know what they can do in California - imagine forest where there’s nothing but eucalypts ablaze.
I have a friend who lived in Australia at one time and he said that the eucalyptus trees are horrible for fires because the oil is so volatile.
What happens is that the tree burns and when the oil ignites, it turns into a fireball that shoots up into the sky and then lands somewhere else and starts another fire.
The problem is that there’s no way of knowing where the fireball is going to land and if it lands on another eucalyptus tree, it just keeps going like that.
When there were fires, the people just vacated their houses and headed for the coast until it was over.