Australia's 2019–20 bushfire season, now remembered as the Black Summer, burned about 24 million hectares between June 2019 and March 2020. Thirty-three people died directly in the fires, more than 3,000 buildings were destroyed, and scientists estimated that around three billion animals were killed or displaced. At the height of the crisis in December and January, pictures of burned forests, orange skies and injured koalas spread around the world.
Artists responded almost immediately. Illustrators, painters, cartoonists, makeup artists and even food artists posted works on Instagram to mourn the losses, honour firefighters and encourage donations. This collection gathers 30 of those pieces, each credited to its creator, with a short note on what it shows and the real events behind it. The fires were fully contained by early March 2020; these works are a record of how people felt while they were still burning.
The Black Summer in brief
The fires were driven by a long drought, record-breaking heat and dry fuel, with climate change identified as a key factor. New South Wales and eastern Victoria were hit hardest, but fires also burned in South Australia (including Kangaroo Island), Queensland, Western Australia, Tasmania and the ACT. Smoke reached New Zealand and even South America, and the economic cost was later estimated at more than 100 billion dollars, the most expensive natural disaster in Australian history.
Wildlife losses shaped how the world saw the disaster. Slow-moving animals such as koalas, and the reptiles that make up most of the estimated three billion, had little chance to escape. That is why koalas and kangaroos appear in almost every artwork below.
Parents, joeys and the animals caught in the fire
A kangaroo stands in a burning paddock with a joey peering out from its arms, a city skyline glowing on the horizon. Images of kangaroos fleeing flames were among the most shared pictures of the 2019–20 season, and this painting turns that news image into a quiet portrait of a parent trying to carry its young to safety.
A weeping woman whose hair turns into smoke and flame holds a koala against her chest, with a sprig of eucalyptus at her temple. The figure reads as Australia itself, or the land, grieving for its animals. Koalas depend almost entirely on eucalyptus, which made them especially exposed when the forests burned.
A tiny koala clings to the top of a bare, scorched trunk and asks "Mom...?" as embers drift around it. The cartoon's simple style makes the loss feel personal: many young animals that survived the fires were found orphaned, and wildlife carers took many of them in.
Under the words "Pray for Australia", a firefighter in a Rural Fire Service jacket kneels in front of the flames while a koala and a kangaroo lean on his shoulders. The volunteers of the New South Wales Rural Fire Service became national heroes that summer, often working shift after shift through the holiday period.
Human hands reach out of the smoke to lift a koala, a kangaroo, an emu and smaller animals away from a burning landscape. The picture shows rescue as a shared effort, which matches what happened on the ground: firefighters, vets, wildlife volunteers and ordinary residents all helped animals escape or recover.
A second piece by the same artist shows a small joey in a blue jumper huddled against its fallen mother in a field of ash. The cartoon-like joey against a realistic, smoking forest makes the scene hard to look away from. Ecologists estimated that around three billion animals were killed or displaced across the fire season.
This portrait places the late Steve Irwin among a possum, koala, wombat, platypus, kookaburra and kangaroo under the words "You'll be busy up there...". Irwin, the wildlife presenter known for "The Crocodile Hunter", died in 2006, and his family still runs Australia Zoo in Queensland. The tribute imagines him welcoming the animals lost in the fires.
A koala looks out from a wreath of eucalyptus leaves and native birds, while small flames lick at the lower edge. The caption "There is no planet B", signed Katharina Rot Illustration, links the Australian fires to the wider climate debate. Drought and record heat were key drivers of the 2019–20 season.
Two kangaroos hold each other tightly as the forest behind them burns. The painterly style and warm smoky light give the scene the feel of a family photograph taken at the worst moment. It is one of many works from that season that used an embrace to express both fear and comfort.
A firefighter in yellow gear kneels on blackened ground cradling a kangaroo, with a burning hillside behind them. The flat shapes and fiery palette echo the colour of the skies that summer, when smoke turned daylight orange in towns along the New South Wales south coast.
A lone kangaroo stands in silhouette between tall gums as fire rises around it. This piece also opens the collection as part of the cover image. Its quiet composition, with no faces or words, leaves the viewer alone with the scale of the blaze.
Firefighters, comics and messages of solidarity
Not every response was a drawing. This edible artwork, credited to Jacob's Food Diaries, arranges seeds and spices into a koala and kangaroo surrounded by "flames" cut from red, orange and yellow peppers. Food artists, crafters and tattooists all joined the wave of tributes that circulated on Instagram in January 2020.
A woman with closed eyes stands against a blood-orange sun while her dark hair streams upward into burning branches. Fire seems to be rising from inside her chest. The image reads as a portrait of grief, or of a landscape that is itself being consumed.
In this four-panel comic, signed by Susie Yi of Cat and Cat Comics, a kangaroo and koala say they have lost their home and family and feel utterly alone, until rescue workers arrive to show them they are not. It is one of the few works here that turns towards recovery: the care given to injured wildlife in hospitals and shelters.
A soft watercolour shows a mother koala holding her baby in front of a row of burning trees. The pastel colours and rounded shapes come from children's book illustration, which helped such images travel far beyond Australia. Many readers outside the country learned about the fires through art like this.
Under the words "Pray for Australia", a koala with a singed coat calls "Mama.." beneath a tree whose crown is shaped like the map of Australia and is on fire. Turning the continent into a single burning tree is a simple way to show how widespread the fires were: they reached New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, Western Australia, Tasmania and the ACT.
A kangaroo, with a joey in its pouch, and a koala hug a map of Australia painted in the colours of the national flag. The gentle, almost cheerful style makes it a message of solidarity rather than despair. Around 500 million dollars was donated for relief and wildlife recovery during the crisis.
A sleeping koala clings to a forked stick that rises out of a ribbon of flames, under a strange green-tinted sky. The contrast between the calm animal and the fire below captures how slow-moving koalas often could not outrun the blazes and instead climbed higher into the canopy.
A kangaroo and a koala embrace on a striped red, white and blue base in loose watercolour. The colours hint at the Australian flag without showing it. The simple pose was copied and adapted widely, showing how a single image can become a shared symbol.
Here the artwork is painted directly onto a face: a scene of a firefighter holding a koala, red-orange sky and the words "Pray for Australia" on the skin of a woman with closed eyes. Face and body painting became a popular way for makeup artists to join the fundraising and awareness posts of early 2020.
Faces, symbols and pop culture
A koala sits on a burning branch while half of its body is shown as a skeleton consumed by fire. The piece is deliberately uncomfortable: it refuses to soften what the flames did to wildlife. It is a stylised illustration rather than a photograph, and it uses shock to make a point about loss.
A long-necked woman with green hair and a dress painted as a blue sky with clouds holds a koala close, a small bouquet in her hand. Set against orange trees, she reads as a figure of the earth or the sky sheltering what is left. The soft colours make it a calm counterpoint to the more dramatic works.
A young woman with tears in her eyes hugs a koala against a background of burning trees. The close crop and direct gaze put the viewer face to face with both of them. Pictures of people giving water and comfort to koalas were widely shared during the fires and inspired many works like this one.
A crying koala clings to a black trunk in the middle of a swirl of red, orange and purple flames. The bold shapes and saturated colours turn the scene into something close to a poster, easy to read even as a small image on a phone screen.
A koala wears a face mask printed with "Australia is on fire" against an orange, smoky background. Smoke was a major part of the disaster: Sydney and Canberra recorded hazardous air quality, and researchers later attributed hundreds of additional deaths to the smoke.
This makeup artwork turns a woman's face and shoulders into a scorched landscape, with silhouettes of a kangaroo, a koala and dead trees painted across her skin, tears running from her eyes and a crown of green leaves. It uses the body as a canvas to show the land in mourning.
A koala and a sloth hold each other in tears, signed by the Brazilian cartoonist Guilherme Bandeira. The pairing connects two disasters that dominated the news in 2019: the fires in the Amazon, home to sloths, and the fires in Australia. Several artists linked the two to make a point about forests worldwide.
This pop-culture tribute shows the Mandalorian flying through the flames with a jetpack while a small green alien and a koala watch from below. "The Mandalorian" had premiered in November 2019, so its characters were everywhere online when the fires peaked. Borrowing them helped the message reach new audiences.
A woman with long orange hair and a small crown holds a koala to her chest while a fox or dingo looks over her shoulder, framed by stylised flowers. The folk-art style recalls fairy-tale illustration, presenting the animals as something precious to be guarded.
A small island with a sad face sits in the sea while its palm-covered peaks burn and smoke rises into the sky. Giving the land itself a face is a simple and effective way to say that the whole environment, not just individual animals, was harmed.
Why disaster art spreads, and how to help well
Art like this travels further than statistics because it gives a vast event a single face: a joey, a koala, a firefighter. For many people outside Australia these images were the first sign of how serious the fires were, and art helped keep attention on the appeals for help.
If a future disaster moves you, the most useful response is usually a donation to established emergency services, wildlife hospitals or recognised relief charities rather than goods sent unasked. Sharing artists' work with their names attached, as here, keeps credit with the people who made it. For another artwork with an environmental message, see A Plastic-Waste Whale Sculpture With a Public Message.
Sources: Wikipedia: 2019–20 Australian bushfire season; Wikipedia: Steve Irwin.
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