The Victorian bushfires of February 2009 captured the attention of all Australians and made headlines around the world. One hundred and seventy-three people lost their lives, the greatest number from any bushfire event in this nation's history. In the wake of this tragedy much media and public commentary emphasised recovery, resilience, community, self-sufficiency and renewed determination. Peg Fraser, working as a Museum Victoria curator with survivors in the small settlement of Strathewen, listened to these stories but also to other, more challenging narratives. The memories and thoughts that Fraser heard, and gives voice to in this book, complicate much of what we thought we knew about the experience of catastrophic natural events. Although all members of a particular community, Strathewen's survivors lived through Black Saturday and its aftermath in ways that were often very different from each other. This is historical truth of the most vital, affecting and powerful kind.
Peg Fraser has a PhD in History from Monash University. She is a writer and oral historian, and helped to develop the Victorian Bushfires Collection at Museum Victoria.
"Peg Fraser's extraordinary book transcends media cliché and illuminates what it meant to live through and beyond Black Saturday. Rich personal testimony and razor-sharp analysis evoke the many and varied ways that the people of Strathewen made sense of disaster." -- Professor Alistair Thomson, Monash University
"Peg Fraser has worked carefully and sympathetically with the people of Strathewen, a small settlement in the forested ranges just north-east of Melbourne where more than 10% of the population was killed and 80% of homes were destroyed on Black Saturday, 7 February 2009. Her purpose is not to reconstruct or dissect the experience of the fire itself but to tease out the meanings of the stories told by survivors, both for those who tell the stories and those who listen to them. It is wonderful to see such a thoughtful scholar taking on this difficult and demanding work." -- Professor Tom Griffiths, Australian National University
Peg Fraser teases out the meanings of the stories told by survivors, both for those who tell the stories and those who listen to them. It is wonderful to see such a thoughtful taking on of this difficult and demanding work. -- Tom Griffiths
