National Library of Australia - Gateways

ISSN 1443-0568 | no. 67 | February 2004


Pictures Collection: Canberra Bushfire Images

A colour digital photograph of 'Volunteers of the ACT Bushfire Service lighting a back-burn on Mount Franklin Road, Brindabella Ranges, on the night of 11/12 January, 2003' by David Tunbridge
David Tunbridge
Volunteers of the ACT Bushfire Service lighting a back-burn on Mount Franklin Road, Brindabella Ranges, on the night of 11/12 January, 2003
colour digital photograph
Pictures Collection, nla.pic-an24954626

In the aftermath of the bushfires that hit Canberra a year ago, in January 2003, the National Library undertook a project to document the fires and the terrible loss of life and destruction they caused.

In addition to the images taken by staff from the National Library’s Imaging Services Branch, a number of private individuals contacted the Library offering their own photographs for acquisition. David Tunbridge’s photograph, shown here, depicts an ACT Bushfires Service volunteer using a driptorch to put in a back-burn along Mount Franklin Road to the west of Bendora Dam.

The back-burn was undertaken to remove fuel between the main fire front burning uphill from the east and the road, which was being used as a containment line. The winds at the time were light westerlies with a relative humidity of 90%, and the temperature was about 6° Celsius—very different conditions from those that would prevail a week later on 18 January 2003, when the fire would overwhelm all efforts at containment.
—Michelle Hetherington, Pictures Collection

For more information, contact pict@nla.gov.au

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