Burn

Abstract

Chapter 8 focuses on bushfire evacuation in Australia’s state of Victoria, where bushfires cannot be separated from the socionatural history of colonialism, Indigenous dispossession, environmental-society relations, and, of course, climate change. Evacuation from fire is part of a longer, interwoven history of colonial practices and logics. Drawing on ethnographic and archival work exploring the Australian Black Saturday bushfire disaster of 2009, the chapter works back through the history of bushfire, colonial settlement, and evacuation policies. In this context, evacuation from bushfires is difficult to separate from the cultural habits and values around masculine notions of defending the home and family from bushfire instead of escaping it. Recalling the animal evacuations of chapter 5, the chapter concludes with the events at an animal sanctuary whose animals were evacuated during the 2009 fires.