Disasters in Australia and New Zealand

Dr Scott McKinnon is a Vice Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Wollongong. He is a historian and geographer with a research background in disasters research, geographies of memory, and histories and geographies of sexuality. Scott is the author of Gay Men at the Movies: Cinema, memory and the history of a gay male community (2016).Dr Margaret Cook is a Lecturer in History at the University of the Sunshine Coast and Honorary Research Fellow at La Trobe University and University of Queensland. A freelance historian for many years, her research interests include disasters, water, climate and the cotton industry. Margaret is the author of A River with a City Problem: A History of Brisbane Floods (2019).

• Foreword.- Introduction.- Ch 1. “Best forgotten”: Black Saturday’s difficult stories.- Ch 2.  “A bit more respect for nature”: Migrant Voices in bushfire environments.- Ch 3. “I mean they build a memorial for people who die in war and it was like a warzone”.- Ch 4. “Shaken but not stirred”: the aftermath of disasters.- Ch 5.  Deluges, Crocodiles and Water Scarcity.- Ch 6. Rise and Fall of a Disaster Policy: Black Saturday and Prescribed Burning Targets.- Ch 7. Decolonising settler hazardscapes of the Waipa: Māori and Pākehā remembering of flooding and fires in the Waikato 1900-1950.- Ch 8. An unnatural disaster: When disaster histories broach a heated subject Conclusion: The Future of Disaster Histories.