Find books, government reports, websites, statistics, newspaper articles and images about Victorian bushfires from 1851 to today.
Bushfire has been part of Australian ecology from indigenous populations to colonial settlers and the present day, and it continues to exert a powerful influence of our national identity and imagination.
Many items in our collections bear testament to this relationship:
For guidance on finding information see our Research page. Explore some collection highlights here.
[ca. 1851]
H91.282/2
This small study of smoke may have been executed soon after the events of Black Thursday, in February 1851. Strutt's journal records that while he was at work at Thomas Ham's lithographic office in Collins Street, smoke and ash filled the streets, unsettling the city's inhabitants. In the days following the disaster, Strutt completed many sketches based on eyewitness accounts of the devastation. On his return to England in 1862, these preliminary sketches formed the basis of the famous narrative painting Black Thursday, February 6th, 1851, which is held in the Library's collection.
1983
H2012.140/2786
11 transparencies in plastic and cardboard mount : kodachrome ; 35 mm.
[ca. 1873-ca. 1908]
H2013.22/144
1 painting mounted on cardboard : watercolour on paper ; 12.3 x 8.5 cm., mount 16 x 26 cm.
Looking through trees toward red gold glow of fire burning in the midst of the bushland.
1854
H16573
watercolour ; 13.6 x 22.2 cm.
[ca. 1876 - ca. 1932]
BIB2022069
1 sketchbook : albumen silver, watercolors ; 28.0 x 39.5 x 3.3 cm.
"The wind changes! a run for life. A narrow escape from being burnt alive in the midst of hundreds of acres of dry bush. Another change of wind comes just in time to save us."
February 20, 1875
A/S20/02/75/181
Wood engraving published in The Australasian sketcher.
View more Illustrated Newspaper Files in our catalogue.
February 10, 1886
PCINF AS 10-02-86 P.25
Print published in the Australasian sketcher with pen and pencil. The forest on fire -- Where homestead stood -- Trying for fresh air -- Homeless.
View more Illustrated Newspaper Files in our catalogue.
April 1, 1890
PCINF IAN 01-04-90 SUPP
Wood engraving published in The Illustrated Australian news and musical times.
Burnt out house in bush, brick fireplace alone left standing.
View more Illustrated Newspaper Files in our catalogue.
The La Trobe Journal is State Library Victoria's scholarly publication. First published in April 1968, the journal features articles written by researchers who have drawn on the Library’s rich and varied collections as source material.
These articles explore material representing Victoria's bushfire history and unearth voices from our archives.
George Gordon McCrae — Black Thursday, 1851, No. 44, Spring 1989
Black Thursday: William Strutt's “Itinerant Picture', No. 75, Autumn 2005
Bushfire and Aftermath: Remembering Black Saturday, 10 years on, through the work of John Gollings and Peter Wegner.
Bush-Fire by Sidney Nolan
We are nearer fire
than you know,
not the fire
of the brain or
even of saints,
not the fire
of reconciliation,
of rights, of fraternity
or even of charity.
We are nearer fire
than you know,
not the fire
of the heart or
even of love,
not the fire
of incredulity,
of spirit, of miracle
or even of truth.
Not these fires
but bright fire …
born of the grass
and trees, covering
the sky with
force, with fire …
demanding obedience;
making both eyes equally mad, and
enduring for ever.
While stationed at Dimboola in the Wimmera, Nolan was involved in fire-fighting. Nolan described the experience: "last night was like the beginning of a world, not much thought in my own mind anyway of the damage it was doing, it had a volition of its own that overpowered such thoughts …. I was frightened in some way of the might."
Poems, La Trobe Journal No. 64, Spring 1999
"Every night that there is a strong North wind, we see “the Bush” on fire, and last night there was a burning about ¼ of a mile long a few miles from the town, which illuminated the heavens like a fine darkish sunset."
Manuscript: Three Westgarth Letters, La Trobe Journal No. 8, October 1971
"The Bush was on fire in many places, some a mile wide, the smoke from which towering up obscured the sky and added to the hot wind. It is the grass and scrub that catches fire and it runs along the ground but only very rarely sets fire to a tree. It merely blackens the trunk. A thunder storm and the wind dropping, it dies away…"
George Rowe on the Bendigo Diggings, La Trobe Journal No. 12, October 1973
"The wind changes! a run for life. A narrow escape from being burnt alive in the midst of hundreds of acres of dry bush. Another change of wind comes just in time to save us." Sketchbook no. 3. (28) Charlie Hammond
