Castlemaine Fire Brigade is holding its annual Open Day next Sunday October 4, and invites everyone to come along to this free community event.
The Open Day will be attended by representatives from local emergency services include the CFA, Forest Fire Management, Victoria Police, Ambulance Victoria, Castlemaine SES and Mount Alexander Shire Council and will feature live demonstrations, fire truck displays, family activities, and practical fire safety information ahead of the fire season.
The Open Day also presents a wonderful opportunity to explore the brigade’s historic museum which contains a rich archive of memorabilia, artefacts, photographs and books documenting the 172 year history of the brigade.
In the wake of the January 9 fire that devastated parts of Ravenswood South, Walmer, Harcourt, Sutton Grange and surrounding communities and deeply affected our community, the role of local CFA volunteers and the knowledge built over generations feels more important than ever.
Castlemaine’s historic fire records go digital
More than a century of Castlemaine’s firefighting history is currently being preserved and will be made publicly searchable through a new digitisation project.
University of Melbourne cultural historian and former Castlemaine local, Dr Fiannuala Morgan is coordinating the project with Castlemaine Fire Brigade and Trove at the National Library of Australia.
The brigade’s handwritten Fire Logbooks, covering approximately 1875 to 1930, record fires, suspected causes, locations and everyday brigade activities. Currently held at the Castlemaine Fire Station, the books will be professionally transported and scanned. Automated transcription will make their contents searchable through Trove, with the public able to help correct the text.
The project will protect the fragile records, preserve Castlemaine’s community history and help fill major gaps in Victoria’s early fire records.
Castlemaine Fire Brigade Captain Trent Dempster says the digitisation of the brigade’s historic Fire Logbooks will ensure one of regional Victoria’s most important community records is preserved for future generations.
“These books are far more than old records. They tell the story of the fires that shaped our town, the volunteers who protected it, and the community that grew alongside the brigade,” Trent said.
“By making them searchable and publicly available, we’re opening up 150 years of local history to researchers, families, historians and anyone interested in Castlemaine’s past.”
Dr Morgan researches bushfire cultural history and reconstructs nineteenth-century fire records largely from newspapers. Unlike newspaper reports used to reconstruct much of Victoria’s early fire history, the Castlemaine Fire Books are surviving records created by the fire brigade itself, providing a rare direct source of information about fires and firefighting in the region. She says reliable records from before 1950 are exceptionally scarce, making Castlemaine’s surviving books an unusually valuable source.
“Anything authoritative, comprehensive and standardised is massively valuable for filling gaps in the historical record,” Dr Morgan said.
“For Castlemaine to have preserved books going back to the 1870s in this condition is incredible.”
Once searchable, the records may help researchers separate the forces influencing fire severity and changing fire regimes, including climate change, colonisation, agriculture and broader changes in land use.
“They could help us authoritatively identify and distinguish the different factors driving worsening fire severity,” she said.
Dr Morgan has sought funding for a broader project in which brigades could identify surviving collections for on-site digitisation, avoiding the expense and concern associated with transporting fragile originals.
“If other brigades have kept records, that would be a game changer for filling in vital missing bushfire information.”
The Open Day at the Castlemaine Fire Station at 383 Barker Street on Sunday October 4 runs from 10am-2pm.
