Historic Fires Near Me
(Re)Constructing 19th Century Environmental Records
In November 2019 the official app of the NSW Rural Fire Service, “Fires Near Me,” became the fastest downloaded App on both Android and Apple platforms. The app, designed to alert users to both proximity and severity of bush-fires, became the official prism through which the unfolding disaster was interpreted. The map possessed an intensity that belied its simplistic rendering as users watched fires tick over from “watch and act” to “emergency” status in real time. Although temporally located, the severity of certain fires meant they became a static part of the interface. An uncanny habituation occurred for the user as event was rendered geography and fire became a recognisable and immutable aspect of the landscape.
At the same time as disaster unfolded, discussion and advocacy for immediate climate reform dominated public debate. Politicians, however, time again proclaimed the issue as “complex” and not without precedent. “Unprecedented” was certainly the defining word for this crisis. The Summer of 2019/2020 saw climate records break so consistently that the term quickly become semantically exhausted. “Historical Fires Near Me” engages with this terrain: both political and geographical. Borrowing from the identifiable and culturally resonant imagery of the “Fires Near Me” app, this interface seeks to produce a cultural, literary and historical map of documented bushfires across the 19th and early 20th century. This map collates newspaper records on documented fires and complements this with fictionalised writings on bush-fires produced over the same period and published in the same medium.
By attending to the paratextual elements that accompany these stories, this map explores the relationship between fictional representations of bushfires and their real-world referent. Ultimately, this map demonstrates that the cultural status of disaster is contingent on the political moment, recording how disaster is memorialised, mythologised and finally forgotten. “Historical Fires Near Me” not only demonstrates the culturally significant role that bushfires play in settler Australian national identity, but also acts as a comprehensive historical record that attests to the unprecedented crisis of the Summer of 2019/2020.
Presentations
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“Mapping Histories and Writers: The Role of NLP in Enhancing Archival Work.” NSW Branch of the Australian Society of Archivists, April 3 2024.
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“Trove Research Webinar.” Co-presented with Kate Ross. The National Library of Australia, 31 August 2023.
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"Episode 2: Bushfires: To Be Continued: A Lost Literature Podcast" (2023)
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Black Thursday and Other Lost Australian Bushfire Stories. Canberra: Orbiter Publishing. (2021)
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“Mythologised, Memorialised Then Forgotten: A History of Australia’s Bushfire Reporting.” The Conversation. (January 18, 2022)
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“Latent Geographic Associations: Theorising Mapping in Journalistic and Fictional Accounts of 19th Century Bushfires.” Presented at Conversations in HADES seminar series, The University of Melbourne, 19 May 2022.
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"Space, Data, Place: Digital Tools for Australia's Deep Past." Presented at The ANU Centre for Environmental History, The Australian National University, 23 August 2022.
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"Rethinking settler (un)belonging: Reading Ecological Decline in Colonial Australian literature." Coming to Terms, 30 Years On: The Mabo Legacy in Australian Writing. Presented at The University of Tasmania, 4 July 2022.
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“Bushfire Literature and Reporting: Mythology, Memorialisation and Omission An Analysis of Bushfire Reporting and Fiction in 19th Century Australian Newspapers.” ResBaz Research Bazaar, The University of Queensland, 26-26 November 2021.
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“Geo-locating Real and Fictional Place: Analysis of Bushfires in Australian Literature and Newspaper Articles.” National School of Arts Winter Seminar Series Teaching and Researching in the Digital Humanities, 24 June 2021.
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Awarded Graduate Digital Research Fellowship, Queensland University of Technology, 2021
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Research Partner, 2021 ARDC Grant, Time Layered Cultural Map of Australia, Dark Places.
Publications & Output
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"Episode 2: Bushfires: To Be Continued: A Lost Literature Podcast" (2023)
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Black Thursday and Other Lost Australian Bushfire Stories. Canberra: Orbiter Publishing. (2021)
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“Mythologised, Memorialised Then Forgotten: A History of Australia’s Bushfire Reporting.” The Conversation. (January 18, 2022)
Funding & Awards
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Joint recipient of Climate Research Accelerator (CRX), Melbourne Climate Futures (MCF’s) funding scheme 2023 in collaboration with FLARE research group, University of Melbourne
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Awarded Graduate Digital Research Fellowship, Queensland University of Technology, 2021
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Research Partner, 2021 ARDC Grant, Time Layered Cultural Map of Australia, Dark Places.