Summary

Ruby Tyler sent this letter to the Burns Unit of the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne from Queensland, along with six pairs of hand-knitted socks, a week after Black Saturday. The hospital distributed the socks to some of the bushfire patients they were treating, and one of them wrote Ruby a letter of thanks. It forms part of a collection of cards and letters donated by the Burns Unit and illustrates the outpouring of public support for victims in the wake of the bushfires of February 2009.

Physical Description

Single sheet of lined blue paper with hand-written text in blue ink.

Significance

Hand-knitted bedsocks convey a message of home, of comfort and of caring. All of these messages were in the socks that Ruby Tyler sent to the Burns Unit of the Alfred Hospital with the wish for them to be given to victims of the Black Saturday bushfires. Domestic items like these are a traditional response to times of trouble and Ruby was calling on a long heritage of women who have knitted socks in response to war and natural disaster. They are a point of connection not only between the survivors of Black Saturday and the wider community, but also between Black Saturday and other times of difficulty, when extraordinary bonds are forged between unlikely people.

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