AustLit

View all works with the subject-concept 'Bushfires'. (This search will include the works listed under the concepts 'Black Summer', 'Black Thursday', 'Black Saturday', and 'Ash Wednesday', as well as more general literary engagements with bushfires.)

Or explore specific categories of works from the table below.

Image at State Library of Victoria.

Perhaps the first named bushfire disaster in modern Australian history, the Black Thursday bushfires destroyed twelve million acres in Victoria on 6 February 1851, with a known death toll of twelve people. The name appears to have been coined by the Geelong Advertiser, who published an article titled 'Black Thursday' the following day, 7 February 1851, lamenting the apparent temperature of '114 in the shade' and 'the great destruction of property by extensive bush fires' (source).

Only works that are specifically about the Black Thursday fires are included on this list. For example, Charles Harpur's 'The Bush Fire', first published in March 1851 (the month following the fires) perhaps draws inspiration from the disaster, but does not make the relationship explicit, and indeed the author's note refers to 'the earlier colonial times, before the wilderness generally was so thickly stocked with cattle as even the remotest locations are at present'. Conversely, Mary Finnin's 'Of Bacchus, in the Marsh' explicitly mentions the time 'when Black Thursday broke in fire, / Darkened cloud-acres of the sky'.

We recommend searching the general subject-concept 'bushfires' for more results.

View all works with the subject-concept 'Black Thursday (1851)'.

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The Ash Wednesday fires (16 February 1983) caused death and devastation across south-eastern Australia, particularly in the Adelaide Hills and the Dandenong Ranges. (In South Australia, they followed the 1980 Ash Wednesday fires, but achieved much greater notoriety.)

Like Black Thursday in 1851, Black Saturday in 2009, and Black Summer in 2019-2020, they followed an extended period of drought. In Melbourne, they were preceded by dust storms, as drought-dry topsoil from farming communities in the north-west of the state blanketed the city.

Only works specifically about Ash Wednesday are included on this list. We recommend searching the general subject-concept 'bushfires' for more results.

View all works with the subject-concept 'Ash Wednesday (1983)'.

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For many years, Ash Wednesday was the touchstone for discussing catastrophic bushfires in Australia. On the fires' anniversary on 16 February 2008, Andrew McGarry and Pia Akerman noted in The Australian that 'Ash Wednesday can happen again.'

The Black Saturday fires began on 7 February 2009.

Black Saturday remains one of Australia's worst fire disasters, with a high number of fatalities and widespread destruction of bushland and property.

Only works specifically about Black Saturday are included on this list. We recommend searching the general subject-concept 'bushfires' for more results.

View all works with the subject-concept 'Black Saturday (2009)'.

Or explore specific categories of works from the table below.