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Australia’s Forgotten Fire History 

(Re)Constructing 19th Century Bushfire Records

This project investigates the history of bushfires in Australia during the second half of the nineteenth century, addressing a major gap in existing fire records. Most bushfire datasets begin in the early twentieth century, while historical scholarship has largely focused on two catastrophic events, Black Thursday in 1851 and Red Tuesday in 1898. As a result, broader patterns of fire occurrence during this period, including frequency, severity, and social and environmental impacts, remain poorly understood.

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To address this gap, I developed the first large scale historical dataset of colonial bushfires spanning the years 1850 to 1900. Constructed during my PhD, this dataset contains more than 110,000 geolocated fire events identified from nineteenth century Australian newspapers. It represents the first systematic effort to document bushfire activity across this period and provides a critical foundation for both scientific and humanities research into Australia’s fire history.

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I am now extending this work by expanding the historical record beyond newspapers through the recovery and digitisation of archival fire records held by regional Country Fire Authority brigades. These fire books, maintained by local brigades since the mid nineteenth century, document individual fire incidents in systematic detail, including dates, locations, causes, weather conditions, response times, equipment used, and damage sustained. Many also contain handwritten annotations that capture local knowledge, operational challenges, and changes in firefighting practice over time.

 

Most of these records have never been digitised and remain accessible only in physical form at regional brigades. As a result, they have been largely overlooked by researchers despite their exceptional historical value. Their inclusion enables a far more detailed reconstruction of fire activity during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, offering new insights into both the environmental history of fire and the development of organised firefighting in Australia. By integrating large scale newspaper data with detailed brigade fire books, this project will produce the most comprehensive account to date of nineteenth century bushfire activity in Australia and significantly advance understanding of the country’s long term fire history.

Publications​​​​​
Funding

  • Chief Investigator and Inaugural Recipient, Melbourne Public Humanities Initiative. Project: Historical Fire Records as Community Data: Digitisation, Co-Design, and Climate Research, Faculty of Arts, The University of Melbourne.

  • Joint Recipient, Climate Research Accelerator funding scheme 2023, Melbourne Climate Futures, in collaboration with the FLARE Research Group, University of Melbourne.

  • Graduate Digital Research Fellowship, Queensland University of Technology, 2021.

  • Research Partner, ARDC Grant 2021, Time Layered Cultural Map of Australia: Dark Places.

Software, Datasets and Tools
Podcasts
Invited Presentations

  • Morgan, Fiannuala. 2025. "Simple algorithms, big discoveries: Using NLP to unlock digital cultural collections." Creative Technologist Lecture wit SLV Lab, State Library of Victoria, Public Lecture, 9 October 2025.

  • Morgan, Fiannuala. “Historic Fires Near Me: (Re)Constructing Colonial Ecological Records.” Presented to FLARE Wildfire Research Group, The University of Melbourne (Online), July 18, 2024.

  • Morgan, Fiannuala. "Mapping histories and writers: The role of NLP in enhancing archival work." NSW Branch of the Australian Society of Archivists, 3 April 2024.

  • Morgan, Fiannuala. “Digital cultural collections and computational methodologies.” Celebrating New Staff Research, School of Culture and Communications Work in Progress Day, University of Melbourne, 7 June 2024.

  • Morgan, Fiannuala. "Historical Fires Near Me: Reconstructing colonial ecological records." Lightning Talk, Making Meaning 2024: Collections as Data, State Library of Queensland, 8 March 2024.

  • Morgan, Fiannuala. "Space, data, place: Digital tools for Australia’s deep past." ANU Centre for Environmental History, The Australian National University, 23 August 2022.

  • Morgan, Fiannuala. "Latent geographic associations: Theorising mapping in journalistic and fictional accounts of nineteenth century bushfires."Conversations in HADES Seminar Series, The University of Melbourne, 19 May 2022.

  • Morgan, Fiannuala. Bushfire literature and reporting: Mythology, memorialisation and omission. An analysis of bushfire reporting and fiction innineteenth century Australian newspapers. ResBaz Research Bazaar, The University of Queensland, 26 November 2021.

  • Morgan, Fiannuala. Geo-locating real and fictional place: Analysis of bushfires in Australian literature and newspaper articles. National School ofArts Winter Seminar Series: Teaching and Researching in the Digital Humanities, 24 June 2021.

Workshops and Seminars

  • Morgan, Fiannuala and Kate Ross. Trove Research Webinar. National Library of Australia, 31 August 2023.

  • Morgan, Fiannuala. "Analysing spatial and temporal data." HASS RDC and IRC Computational Skills Summer School, Rydges World Square, Sydney,7 to 8 February 2023.

  • Morgan, Fiannuala. "Why did they pulp the census? Finding and using historical Australian datasets for geospatial projects." Mapping Culture andHistory, Newcastle University, 17 to 18 November 2022, NUSpace, Newcastle NSW and online.

  • Morgan, Fiannuala, Michael Niemann, and Simon Musgrave. “Geolocating Australian Historical Resources: Finding placenames and locations with gazetteers,” presented at Annual Conference for the Australian Society of Archivists (ASA), Canberra, 20 October 2022. 

Peer-Reviewed Conferences

  • Morgan, Fiannuala, and Graham Dwyer. 2025. "Complicating memory: Revisiting bushfire narratives and organisational responses in colonialAustralia." Paper Development Workshop in Organisation and Management Studies for Advanced PhD Students, Early Career Researchers, and Junior Faculty in Australia, New Zealand, and the Asia Pacific region, University of Melbourne, 10 to 11 March.

  • Morgan, Fiannuala. “Latent Geographic Associations: Theorising Mapping in Journalistic and Fictional Accounts of 19th Century Bushfires.” ReadingFiction across Cultures through Mapping Panel, Modern Language Association Convention 2023, San Francisco and Online, January 6 2023.

Conference Presentations

  • Morgan, Fiannuala. 2025. "Digital Spatial Memories Panel." Panel presented by Fiannuala Morgan, Francesca Sidoti, Heather Ford, Claire Loughnan,and Michael Falk at Digital Humanities Australasia 2025, Australian National University, Canberra, Roland Wilson Building, Seminar Room 3, 3 to 5 December 2025.

  • Morgan, Fiannuala. "Latent geographic associations: Theorising mapping in journalistic and fictional accounts of nineteenth century bushfires."Reading Fiction across Cultures through Mapping Panel, Modern Language Association Convention 2023, San Francisco and online, 6 January 2023.

  • Morgan, Fiannuala. Rethinking settler unbelonging: Reading ecological decline in colonial Australian literature. Coming to Terms: 30 Years On, TheMabo Legacy in Australian Writing, University of Tasmania, 4 July 2022.

  • Morgan, Fiannuala. “Letters and Superfluous as the Gum Trees on the Hills: Anglo Indigenous Naming Practice in Australian Bushfire Narrative.” American Association of Australasian Literary Studies, 6 April 2021 (online).

  • Morgan, Fiannuala. "Historical Fires Near Me." Texts and Their Limits, Victoria University, 21 to 23 July 2021, online.​

Featured Media

  • Australian Research Data Commons. 2023. “Telling Human Stories with Time Layered Cultural Map.” ARDC case study. https://ardc.edu.au/case-study/telling-human-stories-with-time-layered-cultural-map/. Written by Jason Yuen. Edited by Mary O’Callaghan. Reviewed by Jo Savill, Zoë Laidlaw, Paul Arthur, Isabel Smith, Hugh Craig, Mary Filsell, Jenny Fewster, and Keith Russell.

  • Australian Research Data Commons. 2022. “Australian Text Analytics Platform Launches.” Australian Research Data Commons, ARDC article,published 1 November 2022, accessed [insert date]. https://ardc.edu.au/article/australian-text-analytics-platform-launches/

  • Kelly, Alison. 2021. “Researcher Feature: Fiannuala Morgan.” TLC Map August Update, Time-Layered Cultural Map of Australia Newsletter, August2021.

Other Public Impact

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