Arabic version: تغريم رجل من تسمانيا بسبب حريق أحراش في ستيغليتز

According to ABC News, Michael John Davis has been convicted and fined after a fire he lit near St Helens in Tasmania’s upper east coast destroyed two homes and burnt through 1,200 hectares of vegetation.

Davis, 56, was found guilty in the Launceston Magistrates Court of lighting a fire on December 9, 2025, without taking reasonable precautions to prevent it spreading. He was also fined over a low-range drink-driving charge.

The prosecution said Davis was burning a shoebox of tax records in a fire pit at his parents’ property while smoking cigarettes. After the box had burnt completely, he went inside to prepare lunch for his bedridden father. About 30 minutes later, he found bushland on the property’s northern boundary on fire.

He tried to extinguish the blaze with buckets of water and asked his mother to call the fire brigade. The fire spread north through bushland, destroying two residences on St Helens Point Road and damaging TasNetworks and Telstra infrastructure.

Magistrate Simon Brown said the fire had “catastrophic consequences” and convicted Davis, while describing his moral culpability as being at the lower end of the scale. Davis was fined $2,000 for the fire offence and $1,000 for drink driving, and his licence was suspended for six months.