Black Saturday
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Publication Date: 09 December 2018
RRP: $29.95
ISBN: 9781925523683
Format: Paperback
Size: 153mm x 234mm
Pages: 280
Category: Australasian & Pacific

Black Saturday

Not the End of the Story

Peg Fraser

‘Her awareness of the emotions of the people about whom she writes makes this not just a finely crafted piece of oral or community history, but also an impressively empathetic human encounter with people who experienced one of the most terrible human ordeals short of war, and who suffered the effects of that brief but profound horror ever after…’ Peter Stanley, Honest History

‘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.’ Alistair Thomson

‘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 writer taking on this difficult and demanding work.’ Tom Griffiths

Hear Peg discuss Black Saturday with Jon Faine and guests on The Conversation Hour

Oral History Australia Book Award 2019 – Winner

2019 Victorian Community History Awards – Winner: Oral History Award

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

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.

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