By KATH GANNAWAY
READING Dr Peter Stanley’s Black Saturday at Steels Creek was tough! Lots of tears shed.
I had the privilege of launching the book at Steels Creek Community Centre on Saturday and, as I have for many years now, experienced again the generosity, resilience and uniqueness of that community.
Black Saturday put Steels Creek on the map and the book provides a window into the lives of the people who live and lived there through the terror and shock of Black Saturday, and how they are getting on with life as a community in the aftermath – weeks, months and years.
The launch was an opportunity for me to reflect on the Steels Creek community and to provide an “outsider’s” observations of the book.
My first observation was that, yes, it is an emotional read, but it is also a book that is written to be read, with insights and compelling recounting of events and people.
It’s written in the spoken language that people are comfortable and familiar with, and with beautiful prose by both Peter and the Steels Creek people as they shared their experiences with him.
Steve Carroll from Rose Glen describes the lawns around the house in the days before the fire as “like walking on cornflakes”.
Allan Giffard, after an horrific night of fighting the fire to save his home was captivated by the remains of his grapevines “glowing in the darkness like a thousand people with lanterns”.
Peter doesn’t shy away from the personal tragedies, the loss of 10 lives, the inadequacies of events before, during and after Black Saturday, the stay or go policy, preparations made and not made, the problems of getting in and out of the valley in the days after the fire.
Steels Creek Community Centre President Andrew Chapman said in his forward to the book that he was struck when he first met Peter with his concerned manner and lack of interest in a quick outcome.
The final three chapters ‘Aftermath’ make sense of that lack of haste.
It looks at the days, weeks and months after the fire, as the community started to rebuild, and at the Royal Commission, the healing, the struggles and achievements, and poses questions for the future.
In January 2009 survivors of the 1939 bushfires, from their late 80s through to 103-year-old Norm Golding, cried as they spoke at a commemorative forum in Warburton of their experiences and losses of 70 years ago.
In the decades ahead, surviving Creekians will be asked “what happened on Saturday 7 February, 2009?”
Memories fade, even when emotions don’t.
Dr Peter Stanley and the people of Steels Creek can take great pride in knowing that Black Saturday at Steels Creek will serve as an account of their lives and experiences – their community story, for generations to come.
