Learning module:
Shaping places Defining Moments
Investigation 2: Bushfires and their consequences
2.3 Bushfire case study 1: 1851, ‘Black Thursday’
State Library of Victoria
On 6 February 1851 European settlers in Victoria faced their first catastrophic bushfires. The fires burned a quarter of Victoria. The day became known as ‘Black Thursday’. Although it is likely only 12 people died, due in part to the small population in 1851, about a million sheep and thousands of cattle were lost.
The summer of 1850–51 was hot and dry, and Black Thursday was the hottest day the European settlers could remember. Apart from the dry conditions, the fires probably had various causes. One cause might have been lightening strikes. Also many newly arrived Europeans may not have known how easily fires could get out of control in a dry continent.
Read the information in the Defining Moment in Australian history: 1851 ‘The sun became entirely obscured’ — Black Thursday bushfires, and answer these questions.
1. The fire was in the Port Phillip District. Today this area is known as:
Now read the following extracts from a report on the fire by William Howitt describing what happened during the Black Thursday fires, and answer the questions below.
What were the weather conditions?
‘Bush-fires are of almost daily occurrence in one part or another of the Australian colonies, during the summer … The country was this year visited with an extraordinary and intense and long-continued drought. The grass was dried up to a state of tinder. The water courses were in many cases completely exhausted, and in all reduced very low … In this state of things, came one of those hot winds from the north which sweep over the whole country like a typhoon, burning and stifling you in their course, like the breath of a furnace.’
W Howitt, ‘Black Thursday — the great bush fire of Victoria’, Cassell’s Illustrated Family Paper, vol. 1, no. 6, 4 February 1854
What happened to the farm animals?
‘Drovers conducting mobs of cattle and horses, as they are called, by turns to market, were compelled to leave them to shift for themselves, and fled away at the highest speed of their horses for their own lives … The horses were consumed; the cattle destroyed or dispersed’W Howitt, ‘Black Thursday — the great bush fire of Victoria’, Cassell’s Illustrated Family Paper, vol. 1, no. 6, 4 February 1854
What happened to the native animals?
‘Flocks of kangaroos, and of smaller animals, leaped desperately along, to escape the horrible conflagration, and hosts of birds swept blindly on, many falling suffocated headlong into the flames’W Howitt, ‘Black Thursday — the great bush fire of Victoria’, Cassell’s Illustrated Family Paper, vol. 1, no. 6, 4 February 1854
What happened to the people?
‘The destruction, not only of farms, crops, shepherds’ huts, cattle, horses, and sheep, was immense … Eight or ten farms in that neighbourhood have been entirely destroyed; stacks, buildings, fences, everything; whilst several men are missing, and fears are entertained that they have perished.’W Howitt, ‘Black Thursday — the great bush fire of Victoria’, Cassell’s Illustrated Family Paper, vol. 1, no. 6, 4 February 1854
Conclusion
11. What can you say about the fire of 1851 compared to what you know about bushfires in general? Was it similar or different to other bushfires you have heard of or experienced? In what way?
