Black Saturday at Steels Creek

The Black Saturday bushfires killed 173 people — wreaking a greater human toll than any other fire in Australia’s history. Ten of those victims died in Steels Creek, a small community on Melbourne’s outskirts. It was a beautiful place, which its residents had long treasured and loved. By the evening of 7 February 2009, it felt like a battlefield.

Prize-winning historian Peter Stanley tells the dramatic stories of this small piece of country on that one terrifying evening — of epic fights to save houses, of escapes, and of deaths. He also tells the tale of a community — of people’s attachments to the valley and to each other — and how, over the weeks and years that followed, they lived with the aftermath of the fire.

The most detailed account of any one community to emerge from the fire, Black Saturday at Steels Creek shows what Black Saturday means not only for Steels Creek, but also for Australia as a whole.

About the Author

Peter Stanley FAHA is an Australian historian and research professor at the University of New South Wales in the Australian Centre for the Study of Armed Conflict and Society. He was Head of the Centre for Historical Research at the National Museum of Australia from 2007–13. Between 1980 and 2007 he was an historian and sometime exhibition curator at the Australian War Memorial, including as head of the Historical Research Section and Principal Historian from 1987. He has written eight books about Australia and the Great War since 2005, and was a joint winner of the Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History in 2011.