“Black Saturday” most commonly refers to the day of the catastrophic Victorian bushfires in Australia on 7 February 2009.

What is “Black Saturday”?

  • The term usually points to the Black Saturday bushfires in the Australian state of Victoria, a series of intense fires during an extreme heatwave and high-wind event.
  • These fires became Australia’s deadliest bushfire disaster, leading to over 170 deaths and widespread destruction of towns and rural communities.

Exact date and context

  • Date: Saturday, 7 February 2009 , is the day now known as Black Saturday in this context.
  • The label “Black Saturday” is sometimes used in other historical contexts, but when people ask “when was Black Saturday” without more detail, they almost always mean the 2009 Victorian bushfires in Australia.

Information gathered from public data available on the internet and portrayed here.