Know Your Neighbours with Liz Fama’aea

Transcript from the podcast “Speak Out Loud: Stories of Strength from the Southern Downs”

SEASON 2: EPISODE 11

GUEST: Liz Fama’aea

PUBLISHED: 3rd April 2022

[00:00:00] Liz: We have honey eaters and little finches and wrens. And they all sort of hang out in this little gang. It’s really interesting because I didn’t realise, you know, how much birds all mix, even though they’re different species and completely different birds. And so you’ll get this little gang of about two families of finches and then a couple of families of Superb Wrens. They all come roaring through the garden eating the insects, eating whatever’s hanging around on the flowers. It’s really good to see that recovery of the bush after such devastation. I guess it made us all slowly feel a bit better.

[00:00:37] Kathryn: Today’s story on the podcast comes from Liz Fama’aea who joined me to share how valuable it is to be connected with your community. Liz had grown up in Stanthorpe and she was motivated to move back with her family into the area a few years ago so that they could reconnect and benefit from the support of the community. She has a really interesting story to share about the damage that her home and property sustained during the September 2019 bushfire as well as the incredible recovery journey of the landscape and the community which was reflected in the recent Hope and Growth Photo Exhibition.
Welcome to the podcast Liz.

[00:01:28] Liz: Thank you for having me.

[00:01:30] Kathryn: Can you share with our listeners what your connection is with the Southern Downs?

[00:01:34] Liz: I’ve lived here on and off since I was about seven. I think that’s when my family moved here. And I guess have mostly grown up here with my sisters and, you know, moved away as a lot of us do to study and work. Moved back briefly to have my children have my first two. And then moved back when they were starting high school. I think a lot of us do that. A lot of us move back. At some point you start to see the differences when you’re not as much part of a community and when you bring them back, it’s almost like this big sigh of relief, Oh, that’s what we were missing. And within six months they were back building cubbies outside and they were back doing mostly sport based activities or outdoors stuff and going fishing and they were enjoying life a lot more. They were a lot more relaxed and we were a lot more relaxed too. I think the presence of my parents as well really helped and just in general, the community of people that we’d all known as kids that embraced our kids as well. So I guess we moved back for the community and the community’s become fairly quickly a big part of our lives. And that’s really nice. Yeah. My husband also grew up here. He I think spent a little less time as a child in the community cause his parents moved away, but he’s from the Solomon Islands. And so, for him growing up in the Solomon Islands, he had this really close knit community of relatives and extended family that he lived with, and then coming to Australia, Stanthorpe was probably, he says, it’s the closest thing he’s had to the community that he had over there. So for him moving back here was really important as well, because this is the first place they came to in Australia and having a community of people who knew him since he was a child, and then also knew the boys. So for both of us, I guess, moving back here, um, and reconnecting with the people that had always supported us and seeing how they also supported the kids as they were growing up. That was really lovely. Yeah.

[00:03:40] Kathryn: You’ve been the official photographer for the community photo exhibition called Hope and Growth. Could you comment on how that exhibition celebrated the recovery journey and the growth following the bush fires that came through this region in 2019 and 2020?

[00:03:59] Liz: Oh, wow. That was, um, that was just such a wonderful thing to be a part of, I guess, one of the things that I really enjoy about being a photographer, and one of the reasons that I became a photographer to begin with, is the opportunity to sort of bear witness and record events that are deeply personal to both to people and to our community. And to see everyone being able to express their memories and their feelings and I guess the many things that Stanthorpe has been through as a community, through the photography that they’d done, that was really important. I think hearing people talk about their memories and one photograph, you know, would bring up different memories for each person. So you’d have the photographer talking to the firies or the neighbours or their Mum about the things that had happened that day. I think that was just really special. And that’s, I guess what I tried to capture in the photos that I took.

[00:05:04] Kathryn: And you have your own story of the bush fire that came through in September 2019. Is there part of that story that you’d like to share with the listeners as well?

[00:05:14] Liz: So I didn’t actually enter any of my own photos in the exhibition and I didn’t actually take many photos of the bushfire. I definitely didn’t get my camera out and do the professional photography bit. Sometimes I like to not take photos of things. Sometimes I like to try and remember them without having to record it officially. Being a photographer at times, everything becomes about capturing the moment, capturing, you know, evidence of what happened. And it’s not the same as experiencing it. It’s not the same as being in that moment and being fully present. When you’re photographing, you’re thinking about light and you’re thinking about exposures and you become a little clinical in your approach to things. So during that time, I actually didn’t take many photos because it was such a shock too. We had the bushfire come right up to our house. We’d had a plastic tank at the back of the house that melted and actually stopped some of the house from burning. We had a little shed at the back of the house and that had pretty much exploded. We’re still finding bits of melted metal all through our driveway. The tank was right next to it. Because of the drought, we’d been very careful with our water and that tank was full of water cos that was like our reserve. And yeah, the water in that tank stopped the house burning down. So that was pretty amazing to have that happen. We bought the house not long before the bush fire and we were still unpacking. I haven’t seen those sort of conditions at any of the properties that I’ve lived on, where everything is so dry from the drought and the wind was so high. We have had other catastrophic bushfires that have similar in the past. I guess it’s always a threat. It’s always a risk that we think of when we do anything. When we build a house, when we expand our garden, we’re always, you know, looking at it going well, you know, that tree is probably a bit too close to the house. And the trees near my house are trimmed and, a fair way back from the house. The ones that are close to the house have obviously been kept low and that was another thing that saved our house.

[00:07:24] Kathryn: You said that you’d only recently moved into the house just before the bushfire came. Had you had the opportunity to do any preparation to bush fireproof the property before the bush fire actually came through?

[00:07:39] Liz: I guess not really apart from the mowing. I think the previous owner had lopped some of the trees near the house and that really helped. But I didn’t see many of the trees right near the house actually burn. You can see on the tree behind you that there’s burn marks all the way up the trunk still, you know, it’s still shedding bark. It’s an apple gum, so it doesn’t shed bark as easily as some of the others. And that actually still had all its leaves on it. So the leaves didn’t catch fire. The bushfire sort of went around the house. But came up through the yard with the embers. And I think, you know, like a lot of houses, the mulch around things caught fire. But we hadn’t really had a chance to do much in the way of bushfire prep. We’d been, you know, just surviving the drought and I guess more focused on that. And we hadn’t been in the property long enough to really look at the bush and take out the dead wood.

[00:08:32] Kathryn: So here we are about two and a half years later. I think. What sorts of things have you done since the bush fire? obviously there was a bit of cleanup to do from what you were describing there. What other things have you done keeping in mind that you’re in a bushfire prone zone?

[00:08:51] Liz: For us it’s a case of just continuing to do what we’d already planned to do. We probably want to get more tanks put in like a lot of people would. Probably the first thing we did was try and drop the dead trees near the house. There were quite a few dead trees after the bushfire. We still have heaps sort of acres and acres of dead trees. So we’ll never get into all of that, but just trying to drop the dead trees near the house. We’re continuing to monitor the bush and keep dry grass away from the property. There’s not much you can do once you’ve got lovegrass and lovegrass is one of the biggest things that speeds up that onslaught of the fire. So in the backyard here, you can see, you know, I’ve got a bit of lovegrass around us right now, but, we’ve been working on actually removing as much as we can from around the house and replacing that with other grasses and especially the native grasses. I’ve seen a lot of native grasses come back since the bushfire. And just trying to fight the lovegrass a little bit so that the native grasses can have a chance.

[00:09:57] Kathryn: What other changes have you seen in the land around you following the bushfire as it’s gone into recovery as well?

[00:10:04] Liz: Oh, look, that was the most amazing thing. Before the bushfire, I’d been looking at the property and going Well, you know, compared to properties that I’d grown up on, there was not a lot of diversity in the vegetation. There was umm eucalypts and a few wattles of mostly the one variety. And I was looking at it going, you know, there’s no Hardenbergias, there’s no little ferns and there’s not a lot of insect life either. So I was thinking about how to do something about that and how to, um, bring some of those plants back in. And then the bushfire happened and I have seen this explosion of growth all around the house, all through the bush. I’ve seen stuff growing that I’ve never seen before. It’s just been incredible. So we’ve had everything change so quickly after the bush fire. bush right now has about four or five different types of wattle growing back. And that’s of course, you know, one of the things that happens first after bush fires, your wattle just explodes. So I’ve got these different wattles growing and then the smaller plants that have grown back have been amazing. So all of these little seeds that were just sitting there waiting, all came out and then after that the drought broke, you know, we had this incredible rain and it’s all just gone completely nuts. And all of our bird life changed as well, as well as a lot of our wildlife. I think from looking at things, the possums have been the slowest to recover. I have not seen many of those possums returning. I’m sure they’re still around there. There’s probably a lot more food for them, so they’re not coming close to their, our houses anymore, but the bird life has been, as you can probably hear the bird life has been incredible. It’s all changed. We’ve got different birds to what we had beforehand. We used to have a lot of parrots, a lot of different types of parrots come through. And that changed. They stopped visiting the house. A lot of birds did not visit at all. There were no birds anywhere for about six months, a good six months after the bush fire. I think there was just, a lot of them unfortunately wouldn’t have made it. And a lot of them would’ve just had to go elsewhere because there was nothing. It was just like a desert all around us. That was quite difficult because everything was just dead, you know, it was just, um, sand and dead trees and rocks. And that’s what it felt like so, after everything started to grow back, we, we planted a lot. We put a lot of work into the garden around the house, and we’ve planted a lot of, I guess, fast-food type plants, around us right now. We’ve got pineapple sage and that’s really brought the birds, some different salvias and I’ve let a lot of weeds grow, which sounds, it sounds really weird, but a lot of the weeds even the introduced ones that come in are really important for soil regeneration, and also food for the birds. So there’s one that I think is called ink weed. It’s got lots of spikes of black and purple berries, and I saw a lot of birds getting through winter on that. The little black cypresses that grow all through the bush, they’re actually a really important food source for a lot of parrots so we were lucky to have some of those survive and we saw our Rosellas start to come back to feed on the seeds from those guys. And now we’ve got this incredible bird life where we have honey eaters and little finches and wrens. And they all sort of hang out in this little gang. It’s really interesting because I didn’t realise you know, how much birds all mix, even though they’re different species and completely different birds. And so you’ll get this little gang of about two families of finches and then a couple of families of Superb Wrens. They all come roaring through the garden eating the insects, eating whatever’s hanging around on the flowers. It’s really good to see that recovery of the bush after such devastation. I guess it made us all slowly feel a bit better.

[00:14:06] Kathryn: Before we started recording our conversation Liz, you were pointing out to me the native bees as well.

[00:14:12] Liz: Ah, yes. When everything was so dead, there would be bull ants. And I actually found a lot of trapdoor holes that I hadn’t realized was there because they were all covered in vegetation, you know, so all around us, although, you know, don’t want to alarm you, but there are little trapdoor spiders living all through the undergrowth and they survived, which is really good. But we’ve got a lot more insect life now, which is wonderful to see. We’ve got the native bees, the little blue banded bees, they’re all through the pineapple sage, and all the natives that are growing back. I think we’re told that natives are quite short, lived plants and people think of something like a wattle. It’s just going to grow overnight and be quite quick to flower. And that’s not actually the case. What I’m seeing with a lot of the wattles growing back that most of them haven’t flowered yet. The variety we’ve got here hasn’t flowered at all yet. Some of the smaller wattles that I’ve seen growing in other areas, they’ve already flowered a couple of times, but the majority of our wattles haven’t, so there hasn’t actually been a lot of the mass food that those insects would rely on and they’ve come into our garden and are taking advantage of our little introduced plants. And I’ve been really happy about that. So that hopefully as the wattles and start to flower, they can move on to those and the populations can recover.

[00:15:38] Kathryn: Some really exciting changes happening there.

[00:15:41] Liz: So it makes me think, Oh, I wish I knew more about how all of the little ecosystems work together, because you can see it happening and you, you know, you can see that there’s something going on there and you wish you knew a bit more about how to support it really.

[00:15:55] Kathryn: What are some of the things that you’ve learned, Liz, as a result of being impacted pretty directly by this bush fire, something that you think the rest of the community also needs to know about, or maybe you’ve got some advice for other people who are living in bushfire-prone areas?

[00:16:12] Liz: I think, the thing that I, that I really learnt that really touched me the most, I guess, was how important your community links are. How important engaging with your community and being a part of your community is, because we’d only just moved into the house in our little area, I only knew a couple of the neighbors and we didn’t get any formal alerts about the fire until it was right on our doorstep when the police came down our little driveway and said, You guys need to leave now. If we waited for that, we would have left the house with pretty much clothes that we were in and we wouldn’t have been able to take any of the animals. So we may have come back to additional tragedies. So, luckily the one neighbour that we knew called us and let us know what was happening because the fire moved so quickly in our direction. And there’s only one way in and out from our little street. So I think the engagement with the community is super important. So I’d just really encourage people to get out there and introduce yourself to your neighbours, because it is sometimes really life-saving that you do that, not just for you, but for them, because we really rely on each other in the country in times of drought, in times of bushfire. If you have an accident at home, having neighbours that know that you’re there and know who you are and have your contact details you know, I can’t emphasise enough how important that is. And then during the recovery process, we just saw the entire community get together to support everyone. There was so much being given and donated and we’re not, you know, we’re not a rich community. We’re a community of farmers and workers and during the drought a lot of people really struggled and then just to see the amount of immediate help and support that was on offer for all of us, for everyone in the community was just really, you know, I think community moves faster than governments are able to, and all the big infrastructure support, you know, the army and all of that, they do take time to get here. Whereas your neighbours are right there and your friends down the road are right there. So, don’t be too proud to go and ask for help because it lets people know that they can rely on you for help. In the country, we don’t want to ask for help because we always are telling ourselves that, Oh, I don’t have it as bad as so-and-so or, I don’t want to be a whinger, but one of the things that I did learn was that if you ask other people for help, then they feel comfortable coming to you when they need help. That’s what I’ve been trying to teach the kids through this is that when we ask other people for help or when were honest about what we need and what our struggles are, other people will then feel free to come to us and share their struggles as well. And that’s really happened a lot since the bush fire for a lot of us. You do tend to feel that like, you know, that survivor guilt You don’t want to complain too much because you know, someone who, who literally has only their clothes I think it is a bit part of mentality of living here and the mentality growing up in the bush is that being self-reliant is very valued and people do take pride in not being a bludger and not being not being someone who takes more than they give, I think is the important thing. But at the same time, your mental health really suffers when you do that. And then you lack the ability to help other people. Rather than viewing ourselves as being really independent and not needing others or not asking the community for too much, if we keep in mind that we are part of the whole community, and it’s really important that if we stay healthy and we stay well, then we have the ability to help others. But if we’re sort of running on empty, then we can’t really, we don’t have a lot to give, you do see people that isolate themselves too much not able to participate in that I guess, mutual care and mutual support because no one knows they’re there. No one knows whether they want help and people will often be reticent to offer help because Oh they don’t like be disturbed.

[00:20:20] Kathryn: There might be times we need to have each other around.

[00:20:23] Liz: That’s right. We like our privacy and we often like having our own space in the country, but at the same time, I don’t know I think when I was a kid going to town was a really big deal and wasn’t something you did every day. It was a real community event. You’d go to town and get dressed up and put your good clothes on, put your good shoes on. And mum would wash everyone and off you’d all go, you know, do the shopping and, have a coffee or have a, have a catch up with people and then go home again. And I think even if you’re someone who normally spends time on their own it’s really important to keep going to town, you know, go and engage with the community and meet your friends and see how everyone is. And, you can offer help as well as receiving help.

[00:21:06] Kathryn: Circling back to the Hope and Growth Photo Exhibition, Liz, given your own bushfire story, how was it for you being involved with that photo exhibition?

[00:21:19] Liz: Oh wow. Um, I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed talking to the other people in my street. A few of the other people on my street were involved in, um, they’d put their photos in and it was really lovely to talk to them about what had happened. it was also, I think, a really important chance for a lot of us to thank the emergency services, the bush fire volunteers and the people who were there because we often don’t get to see them except for when something happens, you know, and they see know them personally you don’t get much of a chance to say thank you. There were some wonderful poetry that was about thanking the emergency services personnel that had been there. And it was really lovely to see them getting out and feeling appreciated and feeling valued.
[00:22:04] Kathryn: Community events such as that photo exhibition is another way for people to get involved and to get connected with their community. Are there any other benefits that you’ve noticed or that you can think of for people when they do get involved in community projects like that?

[00:22:23] Liz: I definitely think that mental health support of similar events can’t be underestimated. A lot of the time when we think of mental health support or the mental health needs of the country and people who are living through a disaster or after a disaster, a lot of the time we think of counsellors or have social workers on hand or better access to mental health funding and things like that. But I think those events are of great value. Events that support the community as a whole to recover and support people to communicate their feelings about what’s happened in a creative way, help people who maybe struggle to verbalise or communicate how they felt about that event or communicate that they still are suffering from that event. I think having a community art practice like that was really a beautiful thing because you would see people who maybe at other times might struggle to talk about, Oh, hey, I’m still feeling like this. think having an event a few years after the fact might seem like that’s not really going to provide a lot of mental health support or that’s not really going to be the immediate help that’s needed. And you know, you do need immediate help and immediate support when something really big and traumatic happens, but it can take years for those emotions to come out. It can take years for you to actually access how you’re feeling. And I noticed that after about a year and a half after the bush fire, there was a smaller fire and they had the helicopters out again. And I had a really strong physical reaction that I did not expect just from seeing the helicopters and the change in the light that happens during a bush fire. And, you know, the smoke just covers the sun and the light is this really peculiar orange that you don’t really ever forget. It’s completely different to any other sort of light that made me realize that I was still actually affected by it. And then also again, you know, seeing the photos and hearing the stories brought a lot of things out that I had thought, you know, I’ve got this all sorted. I’ve had counselling, I’ve moved on and you realise that, Ooh, there are still some things there that I’m working through. And I think that was the case for a lot of us where getting together and talking about it was just a little step forward in the healing and a little step forward in reengaging with each other, and helping the community to, to heal and to move on and celebrate the good things that had happened. So, I think community events like that, where you’re not just focusing on having a chat or doing mental health work or trying to recover consciously, where you’re actually just connecting together and remembering, that’s a really important part of being a community, I think.

[00:25:23] Kathryn: Liz, we’ve covered a few different things in our conversation today from your connection to the community, your experience of being impacted by the bush fire and that burnt through your property and melted your water tank, the regrowth, we’ve talked about the Hope and Growth Photography Exhibition which you photographed the exhibition as well. And these opportunities for people to, I guess, explore their own recovery, either in structured or unstructured ways. And, once again, coming back to being connected with community and building strong communities. Is there anything else that you’d like to add into our conversation?

[00:26:10] Liz: I think, getting to know the countryside and the, bush around you is something that I don’t know if we talk enough about a lot of the time. The bush is sort of seen as something that we need to control or manage. And through the bush fire I actually learned a lot about the bush and about how we interact with it and how important that is for, not just our survival, but the survival of the environment that we live in. And it was interesting to see which trees burnt and which trees didn’t. A lot of the time we think of the bush as something that will all explode in flame, and we have to be cautious of it and we have to, I guess see it as something a bit dangerous, but I think that the more time we spend actually looking at what’s going on around us, the more chance we have of surviving when something like this happens and helping the bush to survive as well. Most of the eucalypts around my house didn’t burn. Their leaves didn’t burn. The little black cypress that I think a lot of people I’ve heard say, Oh yeah, they’ll go up like a candle. They didn’t. They all dropped their leaves after the fire from the heat. We lost almost all the stringy barks on the property because they did burn. And we lost a lot of our older gum trees. The parts of the bush where the trees are all dead the fire was so hot that nothing was going to stop it by that point. A really important part in, I think all of our houses surviving the bush fire was the fact that the state forest management teams had done a big burn off in the weeks before the bush fire, a huge burn off. They’d been in there for several days. And I think that really saved our little community because it would have checked the speed that the fire was going and the hotness of the fire. We do need more education on how to manage our bush. And we need more education on how to do a safe burn off, how to take out dead trees so that it doesn’t become just a ticking time bomb waiting for the next fire.

[00:28:18] Kathryn: It sounds like what you’re saying is if we get to know that land around us, get to know the bush, connecting with the community which helps with education, but also supporting that wider, that broader fire management strategy right across the community, that it’s not just you protecting your land, but you’re working together.

[00:28:41] Liz: Cos we’re really aware that it’s people around us, you know, whose houses are at risk as well as ours, you know, all of us. The fire got so close to the whole town that the whole town was at risk. And so the fire management strategies that the Park Rangers and the forest management teams and the council work on every year are just they’re vital. We can’t ever defund those because we will lose whole communities of people if we do. Their work throughout the town every year is just vital to to our whole community survival. But yeah, I think a lot of the older people have amazing knowledge that, you know, if we don’t engage with them, will be lost because they really know how to manage fire.

[00:29:27] Kathryn: There’s something there about that we have these people with some of that expertise and experience and being able to rely on them for some education, or being able to access information from them to help us as well.

[00:29:42] Liz: I remember reading about some programs that were happening here with Indigenous land management teams teaching on how to do a cool burn uphill and stuff like that. Like that was really interesting to see that all coming out after the fire. And I think that that would be amazing if we could get more education from people who actually have been doing it for so long. Land management practices of Indigenous people, I think, is an amazing untapped resource that communities could be benefiting from, and I know that the Park Rangers and things like that probably engage a lot more with local Indigenous people, but it would be wonderful to see the community itself being able to engage with that and a bit more of a, I guess, focus on recovering some of the knowledge that we’re losing there.

[00:30:30] Kathryn: Thank you Liz, for your time today. It’s been really lovely sharing this conversation.

Thanks for listening to the Speak Out Loud Stories of Strength podcast with me, Kathryn Walton. I hope this episode inspires you to get involved and to get connected with your community. You can find the transcript and any links mentioned in this episode, in the show notes and please share the podcast with your friends.
We acknowledge and pay respect to the past, present and future Traditional Custodians and Elders of this nation and the continuation of cultural, spiritual, and educational practices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Series Two of this podcast has been jointly funded under the Commonwealth and State Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements 2018.

Returning Home with Peter Gill

Transcript from the podcast “Speak Out Loud: Stories of Strength from the Southern Downs”

SEASON 2: EPISODE 6

GUEST: Peter Gill

PUBLISHED: 10th March 2022

bushfire regrowth
[00:00:00] Peter: The morning after the bushfire,

I’d snuck home by six o’clock

Without much time to prepare myself

For the return home was a shock.

I dodged around the roadblocks

To get back up to my place.

My house alone there in the bush

Where fire swept through a pace.

My carport and my shed as well

Were such a welcome sight.

Though I had prepared myself I might have lost them through the night.

I swung around the corner

And pulled up in the drive

I saw right there, the roof intact

So my house, it did survive.

[00:00:33] Kathryn: My guest on the podcast today is Peter Gill. Peter lives on the Granite Belt in the Southern Downs Region where he’s surrounded by bush land that’s a habitat to a diverse range of vegetation and wildlife, including many birds which you might hear as you listen to this episode. For Peter, writing poetry is a catalyst for self-expression and creativity. He shares one of his poems with us today that conveys the relief and the despair of returning home after the bush fire in September 2019. Peter also shares with us the vital importance of preparation and being proactive, including asking for help of any kind, if you need it.

Peter, can you tell us what’s your connection with the Southern Downs?

[00:01:27] Peter: Well, I’ve been here about 11 years, um, just over and to be honest, I picked Stanthorpe off the map because I wanted to be near family in Brisbane and Ballina but I wanted to be in a nice, natural environment that had its own couple of industries, be it tourism and agriculture. So I figured that there was going to be a healthy economy and a healthy community, and also wanted to be able to buy property with a significant amount of land, my idea of big land, so that I could care for that and be part of it, but still be near a community that had the basics to get by shopping the usual things. If you need to go to the big smoke you do so, but otherwise you can avoid it. So, um, I just thought that Stanthorpe looks like an attractive town, be it Quart Pot Creek and the National Parks around it. Um, and yeah, the agricultural industry and the tourism industry being a significant part of how Stanthorpe can exist. And I was looking forward to becoming part of that and have done so.

[00:02:27] Kathryn: And a few years ago, 2019 and 2020, we had a number of fires come through the region and late last year, so late 2021 we had a community photography exhibition called Hope and Growth. And that was an opportunity for people in the community to submit artwork, particularly photos. And you submitted some poetry to that. And that was a great time to reflect on those bush fires and the recovery journey that the community had been on. Peter, would you like to share one of your poems with us?

[00:03:07] Peter: Sure I’d be more than happy to do that. I did write seven or eight poems, most of them focused on the bushfire. Um, some of it was focused on thanking particular, um, aspects of the, either the firefighting process or the recovery process being the community recovery hub. And I wrote a couple about more personal note of living in the forest, coming home to a house in the forest after the fire had been through and things like that. So, yeah, there was a bit of variety, that I expressed in that, and they were usually tapped out onto my phone at some ridiculous hour in the morning when I couldn’t sleep properly, because it was a bit on the stressful side, as you can imagine. So yeah, I wrote a few, but I think we’re going down the avenue of a personal aspect one that’s written partly as a, an emotional returning home but also includes a bit of an educational aspect about how to manage your own bush setting if you live amongst the bush, or you have some native bush land nearby, um, it’s got a little bit of educational stuff about how to interact with your environment so that you can live in harmony with it rather than being scared of it and how to prepare yourself for bushfire basically. It touches on a couple of different levels, but we’re going for the returning home one just simply called Returning Home and here it is.

The morning after the bushfire,

I’d snuck home by six o’clock

Without much time to prepare myself

For the return home was a shock.

I dodged around the roadblocks

To get back up to my place.

My house alone there in the bush

Where fire swept through a pace.

My carport and my shed as well

Were such a welcome sight.

Though I had prepared myself I might have lost them through the night.

I swung around the corner

And pulled up in the drive

I saw right there, the roof intact

So my house, it did survive.

Though as I looked around me

With smoke still in the air,

The brief sense of relief had passed

And turned into despair.

Most of my sheds and caravans

And several water tanks,

The fire on its ruthless charge

Had plowed on through their ranks.

My fire break had done its job

Almost right across the hill,

And yet it crept around the sides

And burnt most things down still.

Where I had done cool fuel burns

The forest fared really well.

Where the high fuel loads were the fire

Turned it all to blackened hell.

So the lesson here is not to rest

Until your fire prep is done.

And your bushfire plan is personalised,

Not just some generic one.

You’ve got to make really sure

That you’ve thought of everything.

For now we know a bushfire plan

Is not something you can wing.

You’ve got to keep on top of the grass

And trim it nice and short.

If you let some parts get out of hand,

You’ll be on that insurance report.

So call the local firies in for a fuel reduction burn.

Slip the brigade 200 bucks,

Could save your place you’ll learn.

For fire generally knows no bounds

Charging like an angry steer.

So it really came as no surprise

That it had done some damage here.

The drought we’re in has set the stage

For a scary fire season,

For a week ago it was winter here.

Me thinks climate change the reason.

It’s all part of preventing loss

And reducing risk of pain,

For once you’ve been through one bush fire,

Its memory will remain.

That’s Returning Home.

[00:06:10] Kathryn: There are a lot of pointers in there about preparing, really practical pointers about preparing for bush fire season. And that emotional element as well. Certainly a very stressful event, being part of a bushfire.

[00:06:25] Peter: It certainly was.

[00:06:26] Kathryn: And that recovery journey I think it really starts even before the bush fire doesn’t it, with your preparation and then there’s that stressful event. And then there’s the immediate clean up the immediate things that need to be done that are often very practical things. And then as time goes on, there continues to be recovery. I’m thinking that that Hope and Growth Exhibition in the community, that came about around about two years after the fire. So reflecting on those two years, there’s been you know, a lot of other actions that have taken place that have been part of your recovery journey and for the community as a whole there’s been a lot going on too.

[00:07:14] Peter: Absolutely. The agricultural community, not every year, but you know, frequently goes through stressful times, whether it be hail damage, flood damage, fire damage, various economic issues. So yeah that I mean now community deals with stress every year. It’s not just an economic cycle or a global phenomenon of a flu or anything. It’s it’s every year it’s tough going. And I think part of the strength of the community is that there’s support out there. And it’s part of the acknowledgement that if you need support and, you know it exists, then you feel confident enough or brave enough, or it’s not stigmatised. It’s like, oh, you know, I’m being a bit of a wimp here. I need some help. It’s like, no, it’s not about that. It’s about, it’s about understanding that other people are going through similar things. They might’ve been there before. They might be going through it at the same time as you. And if you can interact with people in your community, then you’ve got support and you might have, you might get some good ideas from someone about how to deal with something, or you might simply have someone who’s willing to listen to you tell them how hard it is. Opening up to someone can be the first step for you to have an emotional recovery or to deal with a problem or to fix something or, you know, whether it’s sharing to people talking about, yes, we’re both having the same problem, isn’t it terrible. Or, Hey, I’ve come up with this solution. Or, you know, so-and-so told me that we could do this or whatever, and next thing you know, you’ve got resources available to you. You’ve got something to help. The concept of mental health, we’re starting to try and get it out there in the public domain rather than it’s like, you know, you know, did you hear about this? And I don’t even want to talk about it. Well, now you can actually talk about something with confidence and say, Look I’m going to go out and I’m going to talk to someone and I’m going to get, whether it’s counselling or I’m going to find a resource to help whether it be something as simple as practical skills or recovery or mental health improvements, whether it be socialising more, whether it be getting help with fixing the farm, coping with the loss of a crop, that sort of thing. It’s about sharing. It’s about support. It’s about, acknowledging that it’s okay to say, you’re not okay. I mean, that’s the whole thing. You mentioned about the Blue Tree Project. And that was a project to raise awareness of a lack of mental health, perhaps like, you know, you’re stressed and you’re worried that you’re going to lose the plot or, you know, you’re not going to be able to cope with situations as you used to. And to be able to talk about it, um, whether it be in confidence or whether it be with friends, To actually just acknowledge that there’s an issue and start dealing with it and working towards solutions rather than dwelling on the fact that you’ve got a problem. Work towards solutions, get support and, um, yeah, let’s face it. You can save a few lives by everyone being able to find the resource base that they need and find a connection with someone that’s going to help them, even if it’s just someone at council steering them in the right direction, saying, you know, you can get help by contacting this number or something. It’s like the first step is the most important one. You don’t solve something if you haven’t taken your first step. So the first step is the biggest one. That’s the hardest one. It might be the most confronting one to acknowledge that, Hey I’m not coping with this. I’m not dealing with it. Need some help. And that is the moment in time where you actually start fixing something because you’ve acknowledged that it exists and that you want to fix it. So, yeah, the Blue Tree Project was a bit of a, um, a visual for creating awareness and to get the community talking about it. It gets people talking and starts helping people find solutions to problems that they’re facing so, yeah, there’s always a solution. You can have been through something really stressful. Whole family can go through it. A whole community can go through it. A whole country can go through it. It’s about finding help.

[00:11:17] Kathryn: And certainly the research has been showing how important it is to be connected with your community and to be prepared for stressful events, whether it is a bush fire, preparing your property and preparing your safety plan for a bush fire, or it can be making sure that you’re connected and that you know where to seek help if there is something else stressful going on in your life.

[00:11:46] Peter: Troubles are predictable. Some are predictable. Some are not, you can see some of them coming. I started preparing for the bushfire that came on Friday night. I started preparing on Monday and I decided on Sunday that I was going to prepare for Friday on Monday. So I took the day off work and I took stuff off my bush property and stored it in town cos I thought, excuse me if the [WHISTLE] hits the fan on Friday cos the weather forecast is appalling- strong winds, hot winds, high temperatures, dry, dry ground. I was like, this place is a tinderbox. If Friday turns out badly I’m going to be really up the creek unless I do something today. So on the Monday, I actually was probably the only person that was thinking about a bushfire on Friday because I took my ride-on-mower and my trailers and started packing things up. I packed up all my backpacks full of clothes and bedding and stuff. And I thought, because if I don’t prepare now, I’m not going to have time. If I’ve got five hours notice that there’s a fire coming, I’m going to be losing a hell of a lot of stuff if my place goes up. And I sat on the bonnet of my four wheel drive in town, watching the fire go over the hill. And I counted the fireballs go up where the gas bottles exploding. And I actually thought they were the gas bottles next to the hot water for the house and the granny flat. And it turned out to be barbecue gas bottles. But if I hadn’t have prepared myself for the possibility that I was going to lose, possibly going to lose everything, then I wouldn’t have had the mental focus to start acting and preparing myself for the possibility of loss, for the mental anguish. No, if I’m taking action, then I’m not suffering mental anguish. If you’re starting to prepare yourself for, be it a drought or, you know, you’re going to go look I’m not going to suffer from hail damage next year because I’m going to invest in hail netting or my crops, they’re not all going to be just tomatoes. I’m going to have a diversity of crops. The neighbour up the road now grows vegetables as well as fruits and things like that. So that’s about diversifying. It’s about preparing. It’s about building up a buffer zone or cushioning yourself or whatever. You can’t always see trouble disasters coming, but, um, there are certainly times when if you stop and think about the possibility of a particular type of disaster, then it’s the fore warned fore armed sort of thing. If you’re already on the front foot and you’re thinking about it, you’re conscious about it. You’re mentally more mentally prepared for it. You’re also more physically prepared and more economically prepared perhaps. So there’s things like that. So it’s about preparation and coping and you’re more likely to bounce back. Gotta be honest, I’ve bounced reasonably well after the fire, because I just went Well okay so I’ve reduced my human footprint on my block of land. It’s a big block of bush. It’s now more natural. So rather than going, I lost all my push bikes in the shed and you know all that went up and all my building materials got burnt. It’s like, well, now I don’t have as many projects to deal with so life’s going to be easier and you decide how you manage your recovery. And not to mince words, but you get an insurance pay out if you get burnt out. You get an insurance pay out if you’re insured properly. I know I was under-insured, but, I decided what I spent money on. To replace what I wanted to replace and didn’t replace what I thought well actually can get by without that. So that’s part of putting things in perspective and the usual thing of seeing a silver lining in a situation. How you deal with it, I guess, is really important. Yeah. Rather than me sitting and moping like sure, I was in shock for days and weeks for sifting through stuff and looking at everything that got charred going Oh there’s you know one of my best resource books. Yeah. Here’s the front cover, the little, little bit of ash that you can just read if you look at it in the right angle. How do you deal with that? It’s hard.

[00:15:37] Kathryn: Sounds like it was, almost in a surprising way, an opportunity to reevaluate your priorities, how you spend your time and your energy and finances.

[00:15:50] Peter: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there’s the full range of aspects in your life, whether it be health, financial, recreational, employment, and it’s not necessarily a fresh start as such, but it’s certainly part of it was a clean slate and going, Okay, so I’m going to rethink how I do things to reduce the possible exposure to risk in the future or to feel okay about loss to, be able to deal with loss. You’ve got to feel okay about it. You’ve got to accept it. You’ve got to understand it. You gotta talk about it. So then you can cope with it and move on. Not moving on forgetting, but moving on knowing, knowing that you’ve managed to survive something or recover from something, and perhaps, you know, reduce the chance of loss in the future, or be a bit smarter than you were last time around, like. We’ve got to come up with a way of minimising our exposure to damage or loss. And that can be done as a long-term preparation basis. Whether it be every year you prepare yourself for fire season, or you prepare yourself for storm season or that sort of thing, or economic downturn, you know, whether you’re multi-skilled or whether you’re, you can only do one thing. I’m always busy it’s because I do three different things in my employment for self-employed. Yeah, I do trees. I do grass and I do shrubs and I can do handyman stuff or whatever. That’s that’s just a simplistic thing, but, but diversifying your interests means that you’re going to roll with the punches and be able to get through things more like the next door neighbour doesn’t just grow fruit anymore. He does the veggies and that sort of stuff. So you’ve got different markets that you can sell your products on different times of year when you can sell it. So you’ve got a more consistent income or something like that. So it’s basically about understanding your own situation, preparing yourself for change, being able to accept a change and deal with it. And when things get out of hand, knowing how to step up and change tack or readdress things, reassess it, and maybe go off on a different tangent. As long as you’re prepared mentally, then you’ve got a lot more chance of being able to cope with it and if something takes you by surprise that you weren’t prepared for and you’ve never thought about, then you’re more likely to be knocked off your feet and take months to get back on your feet. And that’s a hard slog. I’ve seen that happen to people, you know, I might have been part of it myself at times, but strengthening yourself for possible things the foreseeable things and the unforeseeable things. It’s I guess it’s comes down to the strength of spirit and, and your preparedness and your foresight to have a bit of an idea about what things in life can affect you and what things you can bounce back from and what things are you going to need help with and who you can contact to get help.

[00:18:58] Kathryn: So circling back to community projects and community events like the Hope and Growth Exhibition, and we know that when people are connected with events, with projects, with people, with the land in their community, that they have a greater opportunity to bounce back. Sounds like you’re saying it really helps to have people in your life that you can talk to that you can be open with about how things are going. You’ve got practical help there as well, you can help other people, but they can also step in and give you a hand, if you might need that from time to time?

[00:19:35] Peter: Absolutely.

[00:19:36] Kathryn: And raising awareness and sharing information, that’s something else that you brought up as being really important in those connections that we have in the community.

[00:19:45] Peter: Yeah. Being comfortable with acknowledging that something’s not right in your life and thinking about which friend or family member or community member, or which official person, you know, whether they be behind a desk or on the other end of a phone, trying to think about who’s most likely or most relevant or who could understand who can assimilate and understand with what you’re going through and who can help you. Even if it means asking someone else, Who do you reckon I should call or where should I go? Should I try the council? Or should I ring up the state ombudsman or go and talk to a neighbour that, you know, went through such and such 10 years ago. Talk to them about it, how they coped with something. Yeah, it’s about taking the first steps to recovery. Not expecting recovery to come to you necessarily, but to actually go, Hey, I want to fix this. How can I do it?

[00:20:32] Kathryn: Some really great pointers in there. thank you, Peter. And thanks for sharing your poetry with us as well.

[00:20:39] Peter: You’re very welcome. There’s a few on the wall in the Hope and Growth Exhibition. You can pop into Jamworks, or you can go into the High Street or out to Wild Grounds Cafe out east of Warwick. And then there’s Vincenzo’s. There’s a few places around where you can see some bushfire photos and some of my poetry’s on the wall there. I don’t consider myself to be a poet per se but you need a catalyst or a stimulus, something to provoke. The need to express something and I just chose poetry to do it. Some people would draw a painting, some people would you know, write a story. Some people would go and plant a forest. I just use poetry, but now, and then I might know who got months, couple of years, whatever, without writing anything, but then something dramatic happens like that. And next thing you know, you pop out eight poems in the space of three or four days. Let it be said that the growth season that we’re in with all of this beautiful lush growth, will eventually lead to dry grass, dry leaves and possibly a water shortage. It’s just the usual cycle. So don’t think that we’ve had one bush fire it’s reduced the fuel load. It’s building up again. So.

[00:21:48] Kathryn: Be prepared.

[00:21:49] Peter: Be prepared. Think about it, work out what you need to do to minimise the damage. Be prepared.

[00:21:57] Kathryn: Thanks for listening to the Speak Out Loud Stories of Strength podcast with me, Kathryn Walton. I hope this episode inspires you to get involved and to get connected with your community. You can find the transcript and any links mentioned in this episode, in the show notes and please share the podcast with your friends.

We acknowledge and pay respect to the past, present and future Traditional Custodians and Elders of this nation and the continuation of cultural, spiritual, and educational practices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Series Two of this podcast has been jointly funded under the Commonwealth and State Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements 2018.