CHARRED furniture, gutted cars and a chimney are some of the items that have been used in a permanent bushfire collection at Melbourne Museum.

The collection, prompted by the Black Saturday bushfires, aims to put together an exhaustive history of bushfire events in Victoria.

Curator Liza Dale-Hallett said the lack of information about previous bushfires prompted the museum to collect information about the February 7 fires while physical evidence was still in abundance and the memory of the tragedy still clear in people’s minds.

Ms Dale-Hallett said most of the bushfire survivors who donated artefacts and told their stories had a personal connection with a museum staff member, and it was through those personal relationships that the museum was able to compile a visual and aural re-telling of the disaster.

The centrepiece of the collection is a chimney from a fire-damaged Kinglake homestead, one of the few structures in the area remaining.

Homestead owner Singh Gill, with Grocon Constructors and bricklayer George Firczak dismantled the chimney one handmade brick at a time, and it is being re-laid at the museum as a permanent memorial to the lives and properties lost in the fires.

“It will be a hearth, a meeting place, that people can visit for reflection,” Ms Dale-Hallett said.

“Fire has been a constant in our landscape for millennia. Since white settlement, lone chimneys are a powerful symbol of fire. So we’re connecting immediately to the recent fires, but also to fires across time and place.”

Ms Dale-Hallett said the collection “would help people understand the nature of fire and their impact on Victoria”.

She was particularly keen on collecting personal accounts of Ash Wednesday bushfires, saying those victims did not receive the same support that Black Saturday victims did.

Items donated by bushfire-affected people include fences, signs, a burnt-out car shell, destroyed household items, CFA pamphlets pre-dating the fire, and video footage, interviews and personal accounts.

“A lot of people wanted to talk about their experiences, it was part of the healing process,” Ms Dale-Hallett said.

Some communities were not the centrepoint of media attention and felt as if their story needed to be told.”

“There have been a huge number of blogs posted on the web and millions of digital images that aren’t necessarily secure.

“Our goal has been to capture that material so it’s part of our history.”

The collection can be seen in the Forest Gallery.