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‘The grim contest between man and nature’
This a sequence of rare audio recordings of eyewitness accounts and news reports from the 1967 Black Tuesday bushfires in Tasmania, the deadliest in the state’s history.
They were made by Nigel Bills, of the Hobart suburb of Sandy Bay, on Black Tuesday, 7 February, and the following day, as the extent of the disaster was becoming clearer.
The Black Tuesday fires killed 62 people, injured hundreds of others, and left about 7000 people homeless.
Nigel Bills made many of these recordings in darkness, having lost his electricity supply because of the fires, and relying on batteries to power his radio and recorder (this was many years before the invention of mobile phones!).
“Red-rimmed eyes and quivering lips give sight and sound to the grim contest between man and nature at its most terrible,” is one classic line from one of the news reports.
(Audio courtesy of John Teniswood)
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