Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Geoforum journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum Are we ready for bushfire? Perceptions of residents, landowners and fire authorities on Lower Eyre Peninsula, South Australia D. Weber a , E. Moskwa a,b , G.M. Robinson b, ⁎ , D.K. Bardsley b , J. Arnold a , M.A. Davenport c a Natural and Built Environments Research Centre, University of South Australia, Mawson Lakes, South Australia, Australia b Department of Geography, Environment and Population, School of Social Sciences, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia c Department of Forest Resources and Center for Changing Landscapes, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, MN, United States ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Bushfires Communities Peri-urban fringe Risk mitigation Fire management South Australia ABSTRACT Housing developments on the peri-urban fringe of Australian towns and cities create complexities for bushfire management due to the intermingling of natural, rural and urban spaces. To address the risk of bushfire, policies and practices have promoted and encouraged landowner responsibility for bushfire mitigation actions and be- haviours. Using a postal survey, interviews and focus groups, we examine perceptions and actions regarding bushfire preparedness from the viewpoints of individual residents, landowners, and the local fire and environ- mental authorities on the Lower Eyre Peninsula of South Australia. Respondents living on larger sized allotments were more likely to perceive that their property was vulnerable to bushfire than those living on residential-sized allotments. Larger holdings tend to have more fire-susceptible vegetation than the smaller properties located in fringe suburbs, which seems to confer to those latter residents a sense of greater safety from bushfires. On the other hand, residents on larger blocks reported higher levels of bushfire management knowledge and expressed stronger connections to the place where they live, which influenced their willingness to work to mitigate bushfire risk. Importantly, there is a disconnection between such individual landholder preparedness for bushfire and that of the broader community. Individual actions often do not translate into collective responses, suggesting that a greater sense of shared responsibility will need to develop to enable effective mitigation of regional bushfire risk at a regional scale. 1. Introduction For many communities in Australia, the risk of wildfires (locally termed bushfires) is increasing both as a result of changing climatic conditions and increasing populations in vulnerable areas (Hughes, 2014; Sharples et al., 2016). Housing developments in peri-urban fringe areas are generating particular complexities for bushfire management and planning due to the increased intermingling of natural, semi-nat- ural, rural and urban spaces (Bardsley et al., 2015). To address this risk, policies and practices continue to encourage individual households and landowners to take responsibility for their behaviours to mitigate risk of bushfire. It is important to understand how residents and key autho- rities view susceptibility to risk and what mitigating actions are con- sidered important by individuals and the wider community to better guide such policy and actions. In this paper, we explore perceptions of peri-urban fringe residents and those of fire and environmental au- thorities with respect to bushfire vulnerability in Lower Eyre Peninsula (LEP) in South Australia (SA). We investigate individuals’ views on their own preparations to face a potential bushfire and consider how these translate into the readiness of the whole community for a bushfire event. The position of Australian fire authorities has evolved over time. The Black Tuesday fires in Tasmania in 1967 (62 fatalities, 1300 homes destroyed) and the 1983 Ash Wednesday fires in Victoria and South Australia (75 fatalities, 1900 homes) were the catalyst for policies that stated residents threatened by a bushfire needed to leave their homes early to escape the hazard. By the start of this century, this view was being challenged on the basis that late evacuation was a prominent cause of fatalities and in many cases, people actively defending a well- prepared property could effectively protect their homes. In 2005 the Australian Fire and Emergency Service Authority (now AFAC: Australian Fire and Emergency Service Authorities Council) published its position, summarized as “Prepare, stay and defend, or leave early” and residents were encouraged to either prepare to stay and defend their property against fire, or to leave early as a bushfire advanced (Handmer and O’Neill, 2016; Venn and Quiggin, 2017). Media and https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2019.10.006 Received 20 February 2019; Received in revised form 29 September 2019; Accepted 5 October 2019 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: guy.robinson@adelaide.edu.au (G.M. Robinson). Geoforum xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx 0016-7185/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Please cite this article as: D. Weber, et al., Geoforum, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2019.10.006