On a crisp winter morning, Warrimay elder Michelle Perry quietly wanders across a scorched, snow-grass plain.
A few wallabies in the New South Wales Barrington Tops watch her from a distance.
All you can hear is the faint chirping of birds hidden in the trees and the trickle of a nearby freshwater creek.
She is hunting a tiny flower.
The area, traditionally known as the Biyan Biyan Plain, is home to the rare veined doubletail orchid, also known as Bularr-Gulga Watuun in Gathang, the language of the Birrbay, Guringay and Warrimay people.
The vulnerable species has been declining due to threats posed by feral horses and pigs, invasive weeds and poaching.
When senior threatened species officer Luke Foster, from the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW), first started working with the flowers a decade ago he would find a few dozen on the plain.
But the 2019 Black Summer bushfires proved a breakthrough in the fight to protect the species.
"During the ... wildfires, fire jumped up here on the plateau," Mr Foster said.
"And in the burn footprint the following season, we had 4,000 [orchids] pop up right where the fire went through.
"That's where we ... drew the link [with] ... its response to fire.
"Like many other orchids, they like a bit of disturbance.
"And so that's when we really ... thought we could combine cultural fire in its management."
The conditions that allowed the orchids to thrive have been recreated in a series of cultural burns.
Mr Foster has begun working with Ms Perry to explore the use of fire in the flower's regeneration.
"I got to know Michelle and her extended family and their connection to the land up here," he said.
First cultural burn
In 2023, about 60 people, from a range of different Indigenous groups, carried out the first planned burn on the plain in more than 50 years.
"First putting fire to this beautiful country, there was a sense of, 'We're doing the right thing,'" Ms Perry said.
Many elders from different groups joined the burn.
Cultural burning is a traditional land management practice used by Aboriginal Australians for millennia.
It involves smaller, cooler and slower-moving fires that are applied with a deep understanding of the local environment.
The group has since carried out three burns on the plain, including one earlier this year, but are still waiting to see if they have had an impact on the orchid.
"After the first burn, we didn't have much response but that was probably because it was a very cool burn," Mr Foster said.
"Hopefully after this burn, which was done at summer after flowering ... hopefully we'll get a response."
Connecting to culture
Ms Perry said the burns had given First Nations people across the region a chance to connect with each other and the land.
"It has been one of the best things that's happened for me and my family," she said.
The Barrington Tops National Park and the adjoining State Conservation Area are the traditional lands of the Birrbay, Warrimay, Wanarruwa, Gaewegal and Guringay people.
Ms Perry said the Biyan Biyan Plain was believed to have been a meeting place for different tribes.
"It might be a place of trading because we're on the top of the mountain ... you've got the Wanarruwa to one side, you've got the Birrbay and all the Warrimay and other closer tribes."
Almost 150 First Nations people were involved in the most recent burn, as well as other cultural activities such as wood carving and weaving.
Ms Perry said the experience was "healing", especially for her nan.
"My nan was taken when she was 14 to work on stations all around the Barrington area," she said.
"She would be quite emotional coming back into the towns and into Barrington.
Ms Perry said she was still learning about areas of her culture, particularly around cultural burns, but she appreciated the guidance of the threatened species team and NSW National Parks.
"I feel like I'm just reawakening," she said.
"I want to learn as much as I can ... [so] I can pass that back onto our youth.
"Giving back to the younger ones, that's my passion."