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.
Dr Peter Stanley is a professor of history at the University of New South Wales, Canberra. He has published twenty-five books, mainly on Australian military social history, such as Tarakan, Quinn’s Post, and Men of Mont St Quentin (also published by Scribe). In 2011, he jointly won the Prime Minister’s Prize for Australian History for his 2010 book Bad Characters: sex, crime, mutiny, murder, and the Australian Imperial Force. He wrote Black Saturday at Steels Creek as head of the Research Centre at the National Museum of Australia, in partnership with the Australian National University’s Centre for Environmental History, and with the people of Steels Creek.