Be warned: if you start a bushfire - and most are started by people - you will leave evidence.
Even the match you lit is likely to remain, charred but identifiable for prosecutors to use in court against you.
Investigators narrow down their search to the start of a fire and then get on their hands and knees to find the tiniest bit of charred evidence.
There's more likelihood of finding evidence like cigarette butts with the saliva of the firesetter because the seat of the fire is usually the coolest part. Fires start small and spread so the starting point is not as hot as further on.
"Things such as matches, things such as carbon exhaust from a car can be found within that area," said Richard Woods, a fire investigator who used to be Deputy Chief Officer of the ACT Rural Fire Service.
According to the latest research which looked at more than 100,000 fires, 40 per cent were suspected arson and another 47 per cent were lit by humans but accidentally or carelessly which only leaves 13 per cent started by natural causes like lightning.
Of the current wave of bushfires, Dr Paul Read of Monash University said, "There were no lightning strikes on most of the days when the fires first started in September. Although there have been since, these fires - joining up to create a new form of mega-fire - are almost all man-made.
"It's not lost on police, emergency services and firefighters at the front line that most of these fires were lit deliberately, or accidentally through recklessness, nor that they are unprecedented in their timing and ferocity.
"Since September, it has been a constant pattern that a few days after the fires roar through we have the first police reports that arson or recklessness was involved."
A lot of arson and a lot of arsonists: "If I had to guess, I'd say about 10,000 arsonists lurk from the top of Queensland to the southern-most tip of Victoria, but not all are active and some light fires during winter," according to Dr Read.
Since September, it has been a constant pattern that a few days after the fires roar through we have the first police reports that arson or recklessness was involved.
Dr Paul Read
"The most dangerous light fires on the hottest days, generally closer to communities and during other blazes, suggesting more malicious motives.
"Only a tiny minority will gaze with wonder at the destruction they have wrought, deeply fascinated and empowered. Others get caught up with the excitement of chaos and behave like impulsive idiots."
Most get away with it but the science of catching them is clever, with much of it developed in Canberra (which is, after all, a capital in the bush).
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Richard Woods travels the fire-prone world teaching police and other investigators how to investigate a fire.
He says the technique is to "read a fire backwards", working back to the seat of the blaze.
Leaves get "frozen" by intense heat as the fire sweeps through. The wind blows them in one direction and the dead leaves on the branch all point in that direction.
People who saw the fire start can identify the rough area. It's then a matter of homing in on a more exact spark point.
With lightning strikes (like the one that started the 2003 Canberra bushfires), the tree that was hit might explode and that debris will remain afterwards. A lightning strike rules out arson.
This detective work is laborious, sifting through small particles of burnt, black debris in a landscape of black debris.
The sad thing is that most bushfire arsonists don't get caught - though a lot do.
In New South Wales. the typical arsonist is likely to be male and young, with the age of the average fire setter around 27, according to the Australian Institute of Criminology.
The researchers studied more than a thousand arsons of all types, including 133 deliberate bushfires. More than forty per cent of arsonists, both of bushfire and other fires, had previous convictions for violence, theft, drugs or arson offences. Sometimes it was a bunch of convictions for different crimes.
"There is also a relatively strong link with drug offences, with over 17 per cent of arsonists and around seven per cent of bushfire arsonists having at least one prior conviction for this offence," according to the researchers.
Dr Read from Monash University said, "The mix of people lighting fires always follow the same age and gender profiles: whether accidental or deliberate, half are children, a minority elderly, and the most dangerous are those aged between 30 and 60. Ninety per cent are male."
He plays down the idea of men getting sexual thrills from lighting fires. He told The Canberra Times that psychosexual pyromaniacs "do exist but are very rare". (There are fetishists who get a thrill from fire but they aren't usually arsonists).
The actual profile of arsonists is more ordinary. "At least among those caught, the profile emerges of an odd, unintelligent person from a chaotic family, marginalised at the fringes of society and deeply involved in many types of crime, not only fire."
Loners and losers, in common parlance.
