Photographer Andew Quilty covered the Black Saturday bushfires in February 2009 – the worst in the nation’s history, with 172 lives lost and 2029 homes razed. He recently went back to the area to document the regrowth in the area.

The images are taken about 500 meters off the road ascending from Marysville to Lake Mountain in the Eastern Yarra Ranges. (Top: six months after. Below: two years after).

Top: a landscape near Clonbinane in the week following Black Saturday. Below: eucalypts near Marysville two years later.

“When it came to these fires, it seemed there was life or death with very little in between,” says Andrew. But two years later, “I found that rebirth was brilliantly visible,” he says. 

Shadows on the verge of a backroad through Humevale the week after and then two years after Black Saturday.

After bushfires, the ecosystem starts to regenerate, when smaller plants and ground cover like ferns and shrubs start blooming. Gradually, animals start to come back as insects and plants begin to flourish.   

Looking south into a valley towards St Andrews the week following and two years after Black Saturday.

The Australian bush is no stranger to fire, but the devastating inferno that swept through central and south-eastern Victoria in February 2009 tested nature’s resilience to the extreme, with more than 2800 sq. km of national park and State forest stripped bare. 

Drive by. Two perspectives of the road linking Whittlesea to the week after and two years after.

“Returning 17 months later, I found that rebirth was brilliantly visible,” says Andrew. “The charred forest landscapes that had been burned in my memory – and, I had thought, into the realms of history, never to return – were barely recognisable.” 

Top: a devastated landscape near Hazeldene the week after the fires. Below: a flourishing forest floor between Kinglake and St Andrews two years later.

Photographer Andrew Quilty covered the Black Saturday bushfires. Two years later, he documents the regrowth. 

Top: off a backroad west of Hazeldene in the week following Black Saturday. Below: regrowth on giant eucalypts near Marysville two years on.

More than 2800 sq. km of national park and state forest were stripped bare in the February 2009 Black Saturday bushfires. While bushfires can be devastating, they are also nature’s method of clearing out and starting again. Many trees rely on fire to germinate their seeds. 

Top: dead sheep piled up by the road near Flowerdale in the week following Black Saturday. Below: daisies pushing up through the ash-enriched soil near Toolangi, to the east of Kinglake two years later.

“I’ve been back a couple of times since then,” says Andrew. “Once in the July 2009 – five months after Black Saturday when the landscape, in all its monotonal, wintery greys looked much the same as it had only five days after. Mist mimicked smoke and fauna would have shed much of its superficial growth as per usual.” 

Top: Near the town of Clonbinane to the north of Whittlesea in the week following Black Saturday. Below: off the road ascending to Lake Mountain in the Eastern Yarra Ranges two years after.

Photographer Andrew Quilty covered the Black Saturday bushfires. Two years later, he went back to document the regrowth. “Trees had been reduced to charred, black skeletons, the earth was baked and baron; there wasn’t a footprint or a snake trail let alone a bird flying above,” hesays of the aftermath of the 2009 bushfires. 

The road linking the towns of Kinglake and St. Andrews lower down in the valleys toward Melbourne. (Top: the week after Black Saturday. Below: two years after).

“When it came to these fires, it seemed there was life or death with very little in between,” says Andrew, of the time shortly after the 2009 Black Saturday fires. “Everywhere we went was lifeless.” 

Looking south towards Melbourne which is visible on a clear day from the end of Bald Spur Road, just outside Kinglake. (Top: the week after. Below: two years after).

“Coming to a ridge, a cul de sac at the end of Bald Spur Road near Kinglake, we looked south toward Melbourne – visible on a clear day – over a rainbow of grey ridge-lines, hillsides like giant stubbly chins, and what was left of Kinglake National Park,” says Andrew. “It was an open vista, thick with forest on all sides. Birds should have been singing, wind shuffling the leaves, animals scurrying in the undergrowth. Instead… nothing.” 

A small ridge on a back road through the heavily forested Humevale.

The car was abandoned long ago, was still there six months after Black Saturday – but gone two years later. The ‘after’ shot is not the exact location, but somewhere nearby, as with the regrowth and missing car, says Andrew, it was impossible to find again.

“Crossing the police road block and driving east from Whittlesea on an eerily still morning just a few days after the worst bush fires in colonised-Australian history was like stepping into another world,” says photographer Andrew Quilty. “It was a division of black and white.”