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.

Landcare with Tanya Jobling

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

SEASON 2: EPISODE 9

GUEST: Tanya Jobling, Condamine Headwaters Landcare Group

PUBLISHED: 23rd March 2022

Landcare tecahing group of students

[00:00:00] Tanya: We run a range of workshops that suit people who are farming, either grazing or cropping or land managers in that way. So sometimes there we’re working on soil. Sometimes we’re working on natural sequence farming. Sometimes we’re working on regenerative agriculture. There’s also a range of bush care groups that we support. So we’ve got at least two bush care groups in the area.

[00:00:22] Kathryn: Tanya Jobling joins me for today’s episode to share information about the Condamine Headwaters Landcare Group, a not for profit organisation which has been active across the region for 30 years. The Condamine Headwaters Landcare Group collaborates with other organisations to help the community connect with land management workshops and projects that benefit the health of the land and the health of the people. This includes education on techniques such as natural sequence farming, regenerative agriculture, bio controls and bushfire risk mitigation, as well as bush care groups which are open to anyone interested in getting involved.

Welcome to the podcast Tanya. Can you tell us what’s your connection with the Southern Downs?

[00:01:21] Tanya: So I work here at the Condamine Headwaters Landcare office. I work as the project manager and coordinator here at the office. I run the projects and deliver all the activities of the group to the community.

[00:01:35] Kathryn: Can you share with our listeners a little bit more about what the Condamine Headwaters Landcare Group does?

[00:01:41] Tanya: The Condamine Headwaters Landcare Group has been running for almost 30 years now. It’s been a very long term Landcare group, one of the longest in Queensland and in the current format it delivers projects on a wide range of land management techniques, Um, relevant to farmers, bush carers, conservationists, any land managers in the Southern Downs. We like to look at what the issues are that land managers are facing. And there’s been some that have been very long-term the usual ones like weeds and erosion. Um, and then there’s some newer ones. We talk a lot about regenerative agriculture. We talk a lot about soil health. We talk about alternative ways of dealing with weeds like bio. And so I look around at the different kinds of needs that land managers have. And I try to design projects that meet those needs.

[00:02:33] Kathryn: The Southern Down’s Region has been on what we call a recovery journey following drought and bush fires in 2019 and 2020. And more recently the region has had some pretty significant rainfall and flooding as well as the pandemic. So there’ve been a number of layers of stresses across our community, as well as right across Australia and the world. What are some of the challenges that people who are living and working on the land have needed to navigate throughout this time?

[00:03:05] Tanya: I think like you said, I think the challenges have been all of those things. And I think that people on the land aren’t really a different country though. I think they’re feeling the challenges that we’re all feeling in terms of what’s been happening for the last couple of years with the pandemic, um, all the rules, the difficulties with travel, the difficulties with sourcing materials or labour. So I think, you know, people on the land are just, you know, feeling what the community feels. We’re part of the community just the same. With respect to the bush fires and the floods and the drought, I think most people on farms can mostly take that in their stride because they well and truly know that that’s part of the landscape that we manage when, when we’re land managers, that’s part of our environment. We always know in any business, be it in land management or in any retail or wholesale or manufacturing, we should be prepared for different things. Maybe the rest of the world now has more of an understanding what farmers go through and farmers have these kind of major disruptors often. So, I think farmers are really good at handling disruptive events, you know, you just take it on the chin and look to the next day.

[00:04:33] Kathryn: Being immersed in land management, and obviously drought, bush fire, floods is going to affect the land management, what activities and events is the Condamine Headwaters Landcare Group currently focusing on? And in what ways is that benefiting the region?

[00:04:52] Tanya: I had a wonderful project that came out of my experiences in the 2018, 2019 dry period, which was having the opportunity to look at some early adopters of natural sequence farming in our Southern Downs area and how those farmers had actually managed to create a place in their landscape that held water and held biodiversity and a lot of life in that really dry period. And so that inspired me to write a project looking for funding for a natural sequence farming project that was successful. So from 2019 to 2021 we ran a natural sequence farming project. That’s a natural sequence farming is based on the work of Peter Andrews looking at holding water in the landscape, rehydrating soils, creating a better environment in the Australian farming system for capturing rainfall and increasing biodiversity, increasing soil cover like pasture cover on the soil. Really interesting conceptual work that really does apply to us here in the Southern Downs. So that project delivered a range of workshops. It delivered a training course with Tarwyn Park Training that was extremely well-received. And we then went on and did funded works on a whole number of properties in our area. And that got a lot of people started with trialing natural sequence farming. And you know, that really builds people’s experience with a new land management technique and looking at those results now has been very encouraging and it’s a kind of work that applies right across the seasons. Um, both in the dry times and the not so dry times, it’s still relevant. You know, we are almost always limited for moisture supply to our plant life in this environment. So increasing the capture of rainfall is really critical, even in the current season. And if we don’t actually capture the rainfall when it is raining, then we don’t have a chance any other time. So that’s one of the projects that’s been very inspiring over the last few years. That’s led into Uh, a range of projects in regenerative agriculture and working with farmers who are deliberately working with a whole range of techniques to build soil, build biodiversity, build health in their system. And the health in their system is then a resilient system. So it’s a system that can handle a bit of dry or a bit of too much wet or a bit of cold or a bit of heat because it is a system that is more intact. So you know, if you’ve got pasture cover on your soil, then a hot windy day is of less damage to your soil than if you have no pasture cover. I mean, that’s a simple example, but farmers who are trying to work with their landscape to increase its function as a system, as a whole, has been a lot of the focus of the regenerative ag work that we’ve been doing. So we’ve currently got a program running a whole range of workshops in regenerative ag. So some of that is natural sequence farming. Some of it is multi-species cover crops. Some of it is pasture crops. Some of it is grazing practices. Some of it is tree establishment where there’s no trees in the landscape and a lot of it is around soil health and system health for for farming. So we’ve got a really active cohort of people who come to those workshops, contribute to them, or, you know, take on ideas out of those workshops. And that’s been one of the really interesting projects that’s been running across the Southern Downs community.

[00:09:00] Kathryn: Tanya, that sounds like there are benefits for the land in terms of a healthier landscape, increased productivity for those who are working on the land which also leads to profitability and benefits for the economy, for the larger economy across the community, which all leads towards health of the people.

[00:09:25] Tanya: I think very much so. It’s not always as direct as what you’ve just said. You know, if we shift to regenerative practices, we might take a hit on yield, for example, if we put on less direct urea in a certain crop, but we might’ve reduced our costs as well. And we might have reduced our runoff to the waterways and we might’ve reduced our insect pressure in the process. So, the benefits are as you said, across the landscape and definitely across the community, but sometimes they’re diverse. Sometimes they’re not as quick as, you know, the quick fix solutions are and the most benefit, and I think this is the one that you could never measure, but is, is the most interesting and most exciting is that people gain a real sense of enthusiasm from understanding that they’re farming better, that there is an encouraging way to work with the landscape, and that there’s a whole world out there to explore of other ideas that apply to a farming. It doesn’t just have to be more of the same fertilizer and more of the same pesticide. That’s not to say fertilizers and pesticides aren’t an option, but they’re one of a number of options. And so a lot of our farmers are really exploring those options and finding it very interesting and rewarding to do so. And the rewards are financial, the rewards are on their farm, but their rewards are in the joy of you know, the work of finding that out as well. It’s probably a little bit idealistic to say that we’re all immediately profiting from regenerative ag. We are, but in a sort of deeper way than, you know, increasing yields.

[00:11:20] Kathryn: Thanks Tanya. How can people get involved with the Condamine Headwaters Landcare Group if they’re so inspired to do so after hearing about some of the projects that you’ve got going?

[00:11:31] Tanya: We run a wide range of projects for all different kinds of interests. And so the best way is to look out in the media for what kind of workshops are on that are going to suit your interests. So for example, we run a range of workshops that suit people who are farming, either grazing or cropping or land managers in that way. So sometimes there we’re working on soil. Sometimes we’re working on natural sequence farming. Sometimes we’re working on regenerative agriculture. There’s also a range of bush care groups that we support. So we’ve got at least two bush care groups in the area. There longstanding bush care group at Killarney. So Killarney Bush Care. They’ve been meeting for a lot of years. People are welcome to get involved with that. And we’ve got a more recent group that does bush care here in town at a reserve, at a particular reserve. So people are welcome to get involved with that. And so there are ways that people can get involved in specifically conservation works and have an interesting social time while they do it. People can get in touch with the office and I can hear what they’re looking to get interested in, and I can put them in touch with the right kind of groups for that.

[00:12:44] Kathryn: Tanya, what’s your top tip for managing tough times, for example changing weather conditions for someone who might be living or working on the land or caring for land in some way?

[00:12:57] Tanya: A top tip for dealing with change is to know that it is all going to change. I mean change is certain. My top tip would be look after yourself and get yourself ready for change because it will come. It is coming. It’s here all the time. Put yourself and your family and your farm or your piece of land in the best possible place for that change. We don’t know whether it’s a drought next or a flood next or a fire next or we often in our lives have personal changes as well. We just need to be sure to position ourselves as best as possible for that. I often like to talk to people and I say, well, you know, there’s three kinds of business. There’s your own business, there’s the business going on around you, and there’s the business that belongs to the rest of the world. Well, the only business you can really mind is your own business. And so get stuck into your own business and make it a good one. Whether that’s your health, your family, your landscape, your own life, you know, and be ready for change.

[00:14:02] Kathryn: Before we started recording Tanya, you mentioned the cultural burning workshops. Could you tell us a little bit more about those?

[00:14:10] Tanya: Yes, certainly. Condamine Headwaters Landcare Group has been involved in cultural burning workshops for a lot of years And all through 2020 and 2021, we ran a series of cultural burning workshops to help people in the Southern Downs understand more about cultural burning. So there’s, there’s three really important aspects to cultural burning. There’s the cultural aspect of it. So understanding the indigenous perspective of land management and burning as it applies in this environment. The second aspect is understanding the way that appropriate fire increases the health of the tree, grass landscape. And so there’s a whole lot of biodiversity benefits that go with an appropriate fire regime looking at grass health, looking at weed control, looking at tree health and looking at cycling nutrients. So the third aspect of cultural burning is understanding bushfire risk mitigation. So with appropriate fire regimes in a predominantly fire prone landscape, we can manage to some extent bushfire risk. All right. So what our workshops were were helping people to understand how they could use cultural burning, cool burning, and appropriate burning to reduce the bushfire risk, particularly in areas where people’s houses are close to bush. They were a really interesting series of workshops. We had a lot of people attend them and still a lot of interest in cultural burning you know, in the community now.

[00:16:08] Kathryn: Is there any possibility of future workshops?

[00:16:12] Tanya: There’s plenty of possibility. It’s always a juggle to squeeze a bit of funding here or there, and then, you know, bring it all together. That’s, that’s our task as a Landcare Group. Certainly the interest is there and I imagine there would be a range of cultural burning workshops coming up in future years.

[00:16:31] Kathryn: Is there anything else that you’d like to share about Condamine Headwaters Landcare Group?

[00:16:37] Tanya: I’d like to share that I understand that it’s difficult for people to know where Landcare sits in, in the whole bureaucratic framework. A lot of people come to Landcare thinking that we’re somehow a government thing. And whilst Landcare is right across Australia it’s not the least bit government funded in Queensland. We receive no government funding at all. We’re not connected to council or to state government or the federal government. We’re actually a local, not for profit community group on the same basis as as many other local community groups. I feel that we as a community have a responsibility to land management, but you know, we also, as a country, I guess, as a nation, have a responsibility for land management. And I guess that’s where state and federal connections come in. And I understand that it’s hard for people to know where Landcare sits in that framework. So when we get a project that is funded, it’s up to us where we can actually get our money from to run those projects. And I guess Landcare has got a bit of a legacy of having been highly funded in the past. There’s just so much less funding around and anybody involved with community groups will know this, uh, there’s a lot less funding around now than there was in the past but I think, you know, I guess that’s relevant in a conversation on resilience. Isn’t it? You know, that, uh, we’re resilient too, but it also means, I guess, resilient doesn’t mean expecting things to be like it was 10 or 15 years ago because that’s not possible. So what we’ve aimed to do at Landcare is to work our way forward in the current funding landscape and be the best kind of group that we can be for the community for what’s going on now, for what our outlook is for the next few years. I hope that people understand that Landcare sits in that kind of community groups space whilst dealing with the rather enormous issues of erosion and soil health and and weed management and land management, and you know, what is sustainable and what is regenerative and what is good agriculture. And we tackle the big questions from a small base. And I think we’re good at that.

[00:19:05] Kathryn: How can people get in touch with what you’re doing with the Condamine Headwaters Landcare Group, Tanya?

[00:19:11] Tanya: So the best way for people to get in touch is to call the office directly. We have a landline. Four double six one, double 9 0 9. We have a Facebook page, so people are welcome to have a look on our Facebook page. We always post our workshops and any other current activities on our Facebook page. People are welcome to sign up to our newsletter. So we send out a newsletter three times a year. People are welcome to become members. So members always receive the newsletters and also are welcome to come to meetings. And they’re welcome to send an email into the office as well. You’ll find the email address on the council website.

[00:19:50] Kathryn: How can people get on your newsletter list?

[00:19:53] Tanya: They can ring me up or send me an email And they can ask to be on the newsletter list. And there’s no obligation. If people want to be on the newsletter list, you don’t have to be a member or participate in anything in particular, just to read what we’re doing on an ongoing basis.

[00:20:11] 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.

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.

Navigating Business in Tough Times

Navigating Business in Tough Times with Julia Keogh from Warwick Chamber of Commerce

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

SEASON 2: EPISODE 4

GUEST: Julia Keogh, President Warwick Chamber of Commerce

PUBLISHED: 27th February 2022

Warwick Chamber of Commerce Logo

[00:00:00] Julia: At the end of the day, I think it comes down to the individual making a decision as to whether it’s going to be that old adage of a glass half full day or a glass half empty. If we as individuals start the day looking at opportunities and solutions, as opposed to the negative impacts that all of these challenges provide on a daily basis. I think that’s probably key. That we look at being solutions focused and take ourselves out of our comfort zones.

[00:00:42] Kathryn: I’m joined on the podcast today by Julia Keogh, President of the Warwick Chamber of Commerce. The Southern Downs Region supports a wide range of industries and businesses, including agri businesses, which feel the direct impact of events such as drought, bushfire, and flooding. In this conversation Julia shares practical ideas for business owners to manage their preparation for, and their recovery from adverse events, such as these as well as the impact of COVID-19. I hope you’ll be inspired for the future and enthused to take action after listening to this episode with Julia.

Hello, Julia. And welcome to the podcast. Can you talk to our listeners about what your connection is with the Southern Downs?

[00:01:32] Julia: Kathryn, thank you so much for inviting me to be a part of this really, really exciting project. As a local Warwick girl, Warwick and the greater Southern Downs Region is very, very close to my heart. I was born here at the Warwick Base Hospital let’s say 54 years ago and I’ve lived on our family property for, give or take, about 48 of those years. So I’m pretty connected to the region.

[00:01:56] Kathryn: You’re currently involved with the Warwick Chamber of Commerce amongst other organisations in the community. How did you first become involved with the Chamber of Commerce and what is your role there?

[00:02:09] Julia: I became involved with the Chamber, probably around 2012, 2013. So, while my children were growing up in Warwick I held a variety of different positions, but I also took on a role starting my own business as a commercial contract cleaner. And I found that I was really missing out on being able to connect with a lot of other local business owners that I guess I was engaging with on a daily or weekly basis. But it never got past that transactional relationship. And I really wanted to grow the business. I wanted to develop it. I was looking for some business mentors in town and my Mum actually said to me one day “Why don’t you join the Chamber of Commerce?” Up until that point, I’d been a sole trader for a long time. And I’d never actually thought that little old me as a sole trader could become a member a local Chamber of Commerce. I didn’t think I had the business experience or the nous to do it. Looking back now, I see how that fear and that hesitancy really did impede my ability to engage with a lot of fantastic local mentors. I ended up being brave and filling out the application form and, started attending some of the meetings. It resulted in a position coming up as Vice President, goodness, several years ago now. And, then the following year, the presidency was made vacant. And again, I guess I got brave and put my hand up. It was shaking a fair bit when I put my hand up, but I still did it. And so I’ve been involved now, since in the executive since 2016.

[00:03:48] Kathryn: Can you tell us a little bit more about the business sector in the Southern Downs Region? What types of businesses, commercial ventures and industries and services are operating on the Southern Downs at the moment?

[00:04:02] Julia: We have such a wide variety. Primary production is still our major economic driver in the Southern Downs. But then we’re looking at, you know, manufacturing is up there, the building sector, housing, all the way through to, well, I guess stemming from the agriculture, primary production and secondary production of goods and services. We truly have such a wide variety of business interests and experience that anyone looking at potentially relocating an existing business or starting a new business, the Southern Downs has so much to offer. We are resource rich. We are land rich. And now recently, after the most fantastic year of rainfall that we’ve had a very, very long time we now are getting back to starting to see some boom times, and as we’re sitting here, where we’re actually sitting in, in my front garden, which is not a garden anymore. It truly is a jungle. Just seeing the different growth that has come through from the rain is really reflective in what we’re seeing within our business sector, that we’re starting to see fresh opportunities, really blossom and bloom.

[00:05:17] Kathryn: And certainly the Southern Downs Region has been on a recovery journey. There have been successive events. I’m thinking of the bush fires in 2019 and 2020, but there was a severe drought that preceded that for several years. And more recently since the bush fires, we’ve had floods, we’ve had a mouse plague and as the rest of the world has also experienced, we’ve been experiencing this pandemic. So how have all of these events impacted local businesses and the business sector as a whole?

[00:05:51] Julia: It’s really interesting to look at how different, events shape a community. You and I’ve often discussed the difference between the immediacy of a fire event, a bushfire event, and how that’s in stark contrast to a creeping drought. So we look at what’s been happening over our region for the past 10 years since our last flooding events in 2010, 2011 to a 10 year drought, and just that stark contrast between the immediacy and the devastation of a fire, as opposed to continuing weeks months, and years of drought. Drought gets under people’s skins. It permeates. It’s a terrible thing for a regional community that relies on agriculture to have to go through. Our primary producers are well, well-versed and very, very used to it being fickle, but we do rely on cycles. And when those cycles don’t eventuate, it becomes incredibly eroding. It seeps into your pores and that, that feeling of despondency and desperation, whether or not people are aware, it creeps into the psyche of a community. Communities come together when we have events like floods and bush fires and communities start to fragment through drought. Now, if we look at the COVID impacts, we’ve been truly blessed across the Southern Downs to be in our own perfect little bubble for so long in that we haven’t truly been impacted. Looking at lockdowns and the impacts of lockdowns we’ve still had space to be able to get out and even if we do live in town and we have a unit or a small house, we’ve still had the capacity to be able to breathe fresh air, and go about life fairly normally. However, with the current variant Omicron and the need for people to be far more aware of social distancing and masks I guess it’s got real for us. My understanding is that we’ve got a couple of hundred cases across the Southern Downs with people who are in home quarantine and being cared for, my understanding is really, really well by our primary health providers. And now it’s our turn to step up to the plate and really show that resilience. I really feel that our COVID response is similar to drought in that it can fragment a community. And I’d really like to flip that and see people come together as we do in other natural disasters.

[00:08:24] Kathryn: How are the individual businesses dealing with COVID? Is that similar to how they dealt with, the impacts of bush fire, drought and flood? For example, the economic impacts, the social impacts?

[00:08:42] Julia: Business owners are still putting one foot in front of the other, however, with the changing goalposts and we’re seeing changes happening on a daily basis. Sometimes we get a week’s worth of reprieve, but as the state and federal governments look at different ways of trying to cope with this really overwhelming issue that we are now faced with, I see business owners, and staff showing fatigue levels that we don’t normally see during our fires and floods. There’s this sense of, When will this all end? And that’s incredibly difficult to keep resilience levels up when the future is so uncertain, but obviously there are ways that we can look after ourselves as individuals so we can look after our teams. We can look after our families. We can look after out our larger community. And that is first and foremost, by recognising that everyone is in this ever-changing environment together and that by keeping a focus on what is truly important to us as individuals, but then taking that into the business framework that we have to be kind and caring first and foremost. And that then leads to a change in attitude. We’ve had a number of businesses speaking to Chamber about how to deal, especially in the retail and hospitality sector, with people who are unhappy with changes within state and federal directions around distancing, around mask wearing. Obviously the introduction of only allowing people who’ve been vaccinated into hospitality venues has been something that has hit our region hard but it’s hit every single region, in every part of Australia and indeed the world.

[00:10:30] Kathryn: So it sounds like there’s quite some difference between how individuals, but also businesses might respond during different types of natural disasters or stressful events in the community. So there’s things like drought and COVID; they hang around for a long time and the impacts are also long lasting. Whereas there are some other events like bushfires and floods which seem to be generally of shorter duration, but the community seems to be mobilised in some way to take action and to drive some energy towards direct support. Is that right Julia?

[00:11:11] Julia: I really liked your use of the word energy and we have seen that time and time again from the large floods back in 2010, 11, with big communities of mud armies just spontaneously occurring and helping out neighbours and people that live down the street, down the road, around the corner that you’ve never met before. We see the same, I believe, with bush fires as well in that there is a huge amount of energy that’s generated with the immediacy of what has happened and potentially that’s because it’s so highly visual. We can see the job that needs to get done and that in turn translates into communities coming together. Whereas what we’re seeing at the moment with COVID especially is that as I’ve mentioned, communities, appear to be fragmenting and I’m wondering if that’s something that as individuals we need to look at from, from our own building of resilience, to start looking outside the self, if that makes sense. So with bush fires, there’s obviously energy that’s gleaned through fighting the fire and then in the cleanup recovery. And then within a small amount of time we see regeneration and growth.

[00:12:29] Kathryn: It’s a really stark contrast isn’t it? There can be bush land one day and perhaps housing, other infrastructure, fencing and so on. And then the next day it’s gone. So it’s a really rapid change. Isn’t it?

[00:12:42] Julia: And that’s the same with floods with large flood events. But then the regeneration and growth is also quite quick. And so visually, we are seeing the coming back. We don’t get to see that with drought or COVID. It’s that long slow game that really fatigues people and when people are fatigued and they’re unsure sometimes we tend to lash out and we’re finding from a lot of our hospitality and retail providers, are saying that people’s ability to just be a decent human being, and be patient and tolerant is something that we’re not seeeing a lot of the tolerance. We’re seeing a lot of the intolerance, impatientness and just behaviours that really aren’t all that conducive to a thriving community.

[00:13:29] Kathryn: So these behaviours that some businesses in some industries might be needing to deal with as part of the ripple effect of COVID can be quite challenging?

[00:13:42] Julia: They can be. There can be some generational markers when it comes to people who have had a lot of experience working in certain sectors, being able to support people who haven’t had that type of exposure and being able to do the flip language with customers who may be experiencing episodes of lashing out to the wrong person. Not that there’s ever really a right person to lash out to. So we do see a lot of support coming through from experienced staff. But I think it’s providing our local employees with the opportunities to engage with external bodies as well, so that we can get some of that expertise happening for people. No matter what age so whether or not we have someone working on team who’s 14 and still at school all the way through to someone who’s had 20 or 30 or 40 years of experience in the hospitality or retail sector. There’s certainly opportunity for us to continue always to develop professionally. And I think it’s really important for employers to be able to provide resilience training to their staff.

[00:14:49] Kathryn: And that also speaks to retention of staff and retention of knowledge and skills that could be so valuable whether it’s stressful events or it could be other things that are taking place in the community that aren’t necessarily stressful, but that, I guess, that collected wisdom that people have through the ages to be able to share that with the people who are newer in their industry or are coming into the industry and building businesses or new staff.

[00:15:20] Julia: I agree, and that actually brings me back to the reason why I became involved with the Chamber in the first place. And it’s looking at seeking out those professional supports, those opportunities to engage with mentors, either in the same sector or a completely different sector. I think it’s really, really important that we continuously look at how we can better improve our professional practice. This goes across the board in every single sector that we have in our business community but also in the wider community itself.

[00:15:56] Kathryn: So that professional development, the mentorship, the modelling, the support that goes with having someone who’s perhaps more experienced in the business community, sounds like that’s really useful, not just for hospitality, but you’re saying across different sectors across the board. And that’s something that’s been really helpful perhaps for some business owners or for some staff, in navigating some of these challenges that we’ve had in recent years. Is there anything else that has enabled business owners to be resilient? Is there anything else that’s happening in the community or internal resources that people have that helps them to be resilient?

[00:16:41] Julia: At the end of the day, I think it comes down to the individual making a decision as to whether it’s going to be that old adage of a glass half full day or a glass half empty. If we as individuals start the day looking at opportunities and solutions, as opposed to the negative impacts that all of these challenges provide on a daily basis. I think that’s probably key. That we look at being solutions focused and take ourselves out of our comfort zones. So part of the strength, I guess, of a Chamber of Commerce is the fact that we have members from all sectors and being able to reach out and network, even if it means taking time out of a busy day to sit with a peer or a colleague and have those really, truly meaningful conversations about how we deal with solution based decision-making. So it is about the individual challenging themselves first. And then leading to that, I guess, change in thinking that will hopefully go across the board and to impact each part of the individual’s business. It is always going to come back to the individual making a choice as to how they are going to respond to any given situation.

[00:18:05] Kathryn: It sounds to me like what you’re talking about is a mindset that becomes part of everything you do through the day, whether that’s personal life, family life, business life, and the attitude that you bring to that can really make quite a difference to how you feel at the end of the day. And including how your business has been responsive to whatever climatic conditions or environmental conditions are happening at that time. Is that part of what you’re saying?

[00:18:36] Julia: I think having a positive mindset, even when faced with the ongoing challenges of the current situation that we have with COVID, as we know, it’s a moving smorgasbord of changes. And so being able to not have a rigid mindset around what we will or will not do within our business structure and practice, I think is one of the most important things we need to be looking at. Businesses that are thriving at the moment are the ones that have been responsive to the ever-changing guidelines as they’re handed down, whether it be state or federal and who encourage, their staff, their teams to follow guidelines. And I’m not saying we should be blindly following. I think we should always have the opportunity to have a critical thought process when it comes to looking at, at, any direction. But when we are looking at overall public health and safety, the businesses that I see are thriving and, and we have many, many businesses on the Southern Downs who, despite all of the restrictions that we currently have, if we’re looking at it from a COVID context, continue to provide outstanding service. And I guess it’s looking at what we do have control over looking at that Circle of Control theory, that there are things that are in our control. There are things that are most definitely out of our control. I guess that then comes back down to the individual response and responsibility of how we deal with that.

[00:20:09] Kathryn: Have there been any surprising benefits for business owners and the wider community as well that have grown out of these tough times that people have been dealing with?

[00:20:20] Julia: I think digital literacy. It’s provided us with a number of positives, number one, being able to connect within the business context of being able to have virtual meetings, whereas potentially as employers, we wouldn’t have been looking at that as being a positive to our business for potentially for several more years, if not decades. So it it’s brought into really, really, stark focus, how we can trust our team members to be doing the right thing. I’m thinking in the context of working from home. We’ve seen productivity from people who have been given the opportunity to do that increase. We’re seeing far better reports of work-life balance for people who are provided with that opportunity. So definitely digital literacy has taken people out of their comfort zone but we’ve learnt so much from that. Digital literacy has obviously pushed individuals, teams and businesses, to look at solutions rather than continuing to rely on doing it the same way. For instance, businesses having meetings with accountants, and you know, that team traveling an hour or two hours to be able to present at board level, being able to now link in with those teams and still have the information flow happening, but not the impact on, on travel. Obviously we’ve got benefits environmentally for that. And I think it’s given us the opportunity to now look at how we do run our business and how we can do it better into the future and none of these changes would have come about unless we were forced into the position in the first place. So out of every disaster, there will always be a benefit.

[00:22:05] Kathryn: As you were talking there Julia it occurred to me that for some time the Warwick Chamber of Commerce was running their meetings virtually using video conferencing. And for myself that actually improved accessibility for that period of time. It made it easier for me to actually participate in those meetings. I know that technology for some people there is a barrier there and I guess I’m just speaking for myself but I’m wondering if that’s true for some other people too, that there have been some benefits of accessibility?

[00:22:41] Julia: Thank you for that. And I agree not only benefits for accessibility, but time management as well. I personally have found that I’m far more productive when I’m given the opportunity to meet people virtually. Being able to, to run a meeting and wrap it up within 45 minutes has incredible time savings not only for productivity, but financially as well. Can you imagine even 10 years ago, having the opportunities that are now literally at our fingertips? Technology has been really, really pushed to, to provide solutions and I think it’s come up with some absolutely fantastic benefits that we’re going to be continuing to use well into the future and they themselves will continue and evolve over time and it actually reminds me of one of my tangents that we were talking about earlier. And that is, that our response to disaster management, whether that be from high-end government response all the way down to individual response, is that we rely on technology so much. It provides us with means of being able to get help to where it’s needed very, very quickly. We can provide updates to family and friends about how things are going for us in real time. And again, that’s something that when I was heavily involved, as you were back with the flooding events of 2010, 11, we didn’t have the range of digital support that we now have at our fingertips. And I just think it’s an incredibly exciting time to be alive and, and seeing the evolution of IT assisting humanity, which sounds like a really broad brush stroke, but it’s a pretty exciting time.

[00:24:29] Kathryn: And speaking of connectivity, I think this is a great segue into another kind of connectedness, which I’d like to ask you about Julia. We know that when people are connected to their communities, rather than living in isolation, they tend to be more resilient during, as well as after challenging times. So whether that’s natural disasters or stressful events in the family or the community, whatever that happens to be. In what ways can business owners connect with each other and with the wider community?

[00:25:02] Julia: Well, thank you. That’s a perfect segue into join your local Chamber of Commerce I think is one of the first things but not only join the Chamber, actually have some skin in the game and be involved in Chamber. Chambers of Commerce, like any community organisation will only thrive when people are active. I’ll just do a quick plug. The Chamber turns 100 this year. So it’s our centenary year. And obviously we wouldn’t have been able to reach this milestone if originally we didn’t have a group of interested community members come together and want to form the Chamber. The Chamber structure and the Chamber aims and objectives are slightly different to what they were a hundred years ago. But that key theme is connectivity. And being involved. So when I say being involved, it means actively participating for the improvement of, not only your your individual business, but for the community at large. And you mentioned earlier that people thrive when they are connected to their community, but there’s an energy component there that we need to unpack quickly. And that is the actual physical engagement process. Unfortunately things won’t manifest themselves for us, unless we provide an action for that to happen. So, we need to be involved. What does that look like? It looks like either participating virtually or in person at meetings. It means bringing ideas to the table about networking opportunities. It’s about reaching out and actively engaging with other business owners. It’s about having simple conversations. We do actually have to have some momentum to do things instead of staying stagnant and letting the status quo be our normal. We have to be consistently moving and through that movement, there will be change. And through that change, there can be positive benefit in whatever shape that that manifests itself. But there has to be movement. That’s the one thing I can say, movement is critical.

[00:27:04] Kathryn: The phrase that comes to my mind with your description there, Julia is creating a vibrant community.

[00:27:11] Julia: Absolutely. So how do we create a vibrant community? We get involved in the community. We engage in things like this fantastic podcast that you’re doing. So that potentially one or two little, little key words or phrases from what you and I have discussed today might actually start sowing the seed for someone to get out and move. That’s the biggest thing and when I say, get out and move that can still be done in a virtual situation as well. You have to take a step. And unless your business is consistently taking steps forward, there will never be any change.

[00:27:48] Kathryn: And that once again, feeds back to something you were saying before that the businesses that are tending to thrive, are those that have been able to adapt and be flexible, not stick rigidly to the way things had always been done, but to look at change, embrace change, and take those actions towards new solutions that maybe they haven’t had to use before.

[00:28:14] Julia: And that’s exactly right. And it’s about being aware that it’s okay to feel nervous, to feel that sense of trepidation, but take the step anyway. I remember saying to um, my middle son years and years ago, he was very, very nervous about going to primary school. He was starting a new primary school. And he said to me, in the car, driving into town, “I’ve just got butterflies in my stomach, just got butterflies.” And I said to him, “It’s okay to have the feeling of butterflies in your stomach, but you have control of the butterflies. So make them fly in formation and make them work for you.” And it’s okay for business owners to feel nervous about the current times that we have. I think you’d have to be pretty stoic to not feel some sense of there are things going on that are out of my control. I think we can agree that, you know, there’s a lot going on that’s out of our control, but let’s focus on what is in our control and take that step anyway.

[00:29:08] Kathryn: What supports and resources are currently available for business owners who might be having some challenges with managing their own personal stresses or with stresses that are particular to their business?

[00:29:21] Julia: Oh my goodness. I can answer that simply. There is a wealth of support for small to medium business owners. The list is incredibly long, and we were talking before about digital literacy. All it takes is giving yourself some time to sit, do some reflection around what are the key elements that you are currently having some struggles or some difficulty with? No one knows your business the way you know your business so you need to be able to identify the key issues that you feel are impacting the business and then start doing some research. I mentioned earlier that the Chambers of Commerce have evolved over time. A hundred years ago, the Warwick Chamber of Commerce was focused to provide a united voice on behalf of the business sector, but also to be a wealth of knowledge and an industry expertise to be able to feed back to businesses. With the introduction of the internet, a huge amount of that information can now be located by anyone. So Chamber’s role has morphed over time, but getting back to your key question, where can business owners find solutions. They can reach out to their local Chamber of Commerce. They can reach out to the Chamber of Commerce and Industry Queensland. Locally we have fantastic providers with TAFE who provide links to employers for free education. We mentioned earlier about, how do we deal with aggressive or rude customers? How do we up-skill our team? The key is identifying what it is that you need help with. Actually being brave and taking that first step and saying that you need help, whether it’s to yourself, whether it’s to a business mentor that you may have, whether it’s by contacting Chamber and saying, Don’t know if you guys can help me, but I’m struggling with this at the moment. I guess it’s really bringing back into focus the fact that at different times, throughout our professional and business life, that there are things that we’re going to need to ask for assistance with. And that it’s okay.

[00:31:31] Kathryn: In the first series of this podcast, we spoke with Donna Neale-Arnold who’s a financial counsellor with Lifeline. And one of the other resources that she spoke about was the Rural Financial Counselling Service which is a free service that can provide some support to small business. And particularly we were talking about post bush fires. We’ll include the links to services like that, as well as the ones you’ve mentioned Julia, in the show notes that will be available following this episode.

[00:32:06] Julia: That’d be excellent. There is a wealth of information out there. There’s a wealth of resources out there, but the reoccurring message that I get back from business owners is I’m just too busy. And I’m going to challenge that right now and say, if you’re too busy to be able to do some reflective practice on your own business, and you’ve already identified, that there’s some things that you need assistance with, isn’t it your responsibility to actually spend some time to try and find some solutions in the first place. There’s a range of different supports, services, solutions, out there, but it’s not going to manifest itself unless you invest the time.

[00:32:46] Kathryn: Taking the action, once again, investing your time and energy into something that could be quite fruitful.

[00:32:53] Julia: Absolutely. One of the best things I was ever taught by one of my mentors was when you identify the problem, you’re then faced with the problem. So you’ve taken those first steps of doing that identification process. Sometimes the issue can seem quite large, you know, like the elephant in the room and the only way to eat the elephant in the room is to do it one bite at a time. So identify, take the time and look at what solution will best fit in with your particular business need.

[00:33:26] Kathryn: And if there are any business owners listening who would like to look at what options they have to support their own personal mental health, where would be the place that they should start looking?

[00:33:39] Julia: Again, there is such a huge range of supports available. It could be peer to peer. So linking up with a like-minded business. It could be going down the track of engaging with some formalised supports accessing mental health Better Access. There are organisations that provide Employee Assistance Programs. There’s a wide range of different providers across Australia. Some of the larger businesses in town are linking in with those EAP providers now, and that provides not only the business owners, but the team members as well, to be able to have access to virtual counsellors, whether it be by phone, Telehealth appointments, things like that. So there are a wide range, but again, it comes back to the identification and taking the first step. So it’s having the conversation that matters, I guess.

[00:34:32] Kathryn: So that conversation could be with a peer, it could be with a doctor, it could be with someone from Chamber, getting some direction about where to go?

[00:34:42] Julia: It certainly could.

[00:34:43] Kathryn: What advice would you give to someone who’s considering setting up a business and they want their business to be resilient and sustainable into the future, being able to navigate these sorts of tough waters that we’ve been needing to navigate over the last 10 years or so?

[00:35:02] Julia: Firstly, do your research, and set up a strategic plan slash framework for your business. Humans are incredibly creative. We have wonderful ideas and sometimes those ideas don’t actually translate that well into reality. So first and foremost is do your market research and make sure you have the time to plan properly. Do your due diligence and take advice. Spend the time and potentially some finances and get good advice before you start out. The normal rule of thumb is if you can make it through the first two years, then you have a good chance of having a sustainable and a thriving business model, but you need to know what your product is, and you need to be able to make sure that you have the I guess, internal fortitude to go through tough times. And if you start out with that mindset, then you’re already well ahead.

[00:36:05] Kathryn: What is your great hope for the business sector as we move into the future Julia?

[00:36:11] Julia: What an interesting question. What is my great hope? My hope is that we learn from the challenges that we’ve been faced with particularly over the past 10 years. And I’m not downplaying or meaning to sound like our community is unique because at the end of the day, every single rural community across Australia has been faced with similar challenges. But my hope for our community, for our business community is that we can learn and hold on to the learnings that we’ve taken through the past 10 years. It has been an incredibly rough and rocky road. The Southern Downs has shown that we are a resilient community.

[00:36:56] Kathryn: So being able to incorporate everything we’ve learned, embrace that and have that below our feet as a foundation so that we’re less vulnerable to stressful events in the future, perhaps.

[00:37:10] Julia: And less reactive, that we can meet all of the challenges that 2022 and 2023 and the future will bring to us knowing that we have proven that we can rise to meet the changing needs and continue to be a well-connected community.

[00:37:29] Kathryn: Julia, is there anything else that you’d like to share about the Southern Downs Region or the business sector in relation to disaster recovery, disaster management or even stressful event management?

[00:37:42] Julia: Oh, goodness. I can see how far we have come in the past 10 years from being heavily involved in not only the initial disaster managements with the floods back in 2010, 2011, to where our local disaster management team sits now. Our framework, our responsiveness, our communication with the community has grown so strong it’s such a positive thing. I’ll refer to the most recent flooding events. The responsiveness around getting information out to the community through the local disaster management group has been absolutely outstanding. And I’m not saying that 10 years ago, we didn’t do a good job because everyone pulled together, but I can see how we’ve taken those learnings and have developed far more robust frameworks and, and approaches. And that’s what I hope we will continue to grow and evolve so that the impact on the community when we are faced with the next issue, that our recovery time won’t be as long.

[00:38:47] Kathryn: How can people find out a bit more about the Warwick Chamber of Commerce or get in touch with you?

[00:38:54] Julia: Thank you so much for asking. So we have a fantastic website www.warwickqld.com.au. We also have a Facebook page, so Warwick Chamber of Commerce and obviously all of the usual email contacts that are located on our website. Our Chamber is very open about being able to provide ease of contact. So just reach out. We’re just either a click or a phone call away.

[00:39:22] 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.

Building and Nurturing Community at the Dalveen Community Hall

BUILDING AND NURTURING COMMUNITY (DALVEEN COMMUNITY HALL)
Transcript from the podcast “Speak Out Loud: Stories of Strength from the Southern Downs”

SEASON 2: EPISODE 3

GUEST: Nathan Parkes, President Dalveen Sports Club

PUBLISHED: 22nd February 2022

Dalveen Community Hall

[00:00:00] Nathan: When I moved here, I was told about the Friday nights at the Dalveen Hall. So I came along to meet the locals and enjoy a beer and a meal. I found it to be a great community. The locals are very welcoming and I’ve been coming to the hall ever since.

[00:00:20] Kathryn: Nathan Parkes joins me on the podcast today. Nathan is the president of the Dalveen Sports Club which is housed by the Dalveen Community Hall. The hall is a hub for this vibrant community that’s located between Warwick and Stanthorpe on the Southern Downs. There’s so much going on at the hall, so many opportunities to connect with locals and visitors, to get involved in volunteering and with community groups. And this community has some really innovative ideas that Nathan shared with me in this conversation. And I’m excited to share them with you too, so that you can also be inspired to take action. Hello, Nathan. And welcome to the podcast.

[00:01:03] Nathan: Thank you.

[00:01:04] Kathryn: Nathan, can you tell us what’s your connection with the Southern Downs and even with the Dalveen community specifically?

[00:01:11] Nathan: All right. Well, my wife and I, we did the tree change thing about 17 years ago, this coming June. So we both gave up careers in the city. I worked in construction and my wife worked in scientific research and we moved to the country so that our children could be raised in a country environment. I had a, uh, a good friend move here and he encouraged me to come along and have a look at some property in the area. And I fell in love with with the place. We moved here when our eldest boy was one. I now have three boys, all of which were schooled at the Dalveen State School and are now in their last years at high school.  So I’ve held various positions within the club and I’m currently the president of the Dalveen Sports Club.

[00:01:48] Kathryn: What is the hall currently being used for? It’s quite an establishment here. There are a number of buildings and a number of different functions.

[00:01:58] Nathan: Yes. Yeah. It’s quite a large area that the land itself is owned by the council. And on that land, we have the Dalveen Hall, and the oval. And also we have the Dalveen Rural Fire Brigade facility. So it’s a large area, numerous buildings. We all sort of work together. The Dalveen Sports Club supports the, the fire brigade and vice versa. So yeah, it’s, a great establishment and it’s an establishment that’s been funded by community. It’s been fundraised and built by the community for the community. I could confidently say the Dalveen Hall would be one of the most well utilised halls on the Southern Downs. So in terms of, of use, I’ve got a bit of a list here I’ll refer to. The hall is used for a number of things. We have CWA craft groups here every fortnight. We have CWA monthly meetings. They hold the Biggest Morning Teas and other fundraising events at the hall. The Sports Club hosts community dinners every Friday night except public holidays. It also has its holds its meetings monthly. We have a subcommittee of the Dalveen Sports Club called the Dalveen Film Society. They hold monthly meetings and bi-monthly movie screenings. We have another Sunday sewing group held every fortnight. The Wild Dog Management Group have their monthly meetings here. The Dalveen State School regularly utilise the hall and the oval for their school and inter-school sports. The Dalveen CWA have held a Christmas Tree here every year for the last 96 years. So that’s a celebration Christmas celebration that the CWA put on for the community. We have a group called the Darling Downs Drifters which hold three day events yearly. We have community meetings with councillors, the electoral commission hold their polling for federal and state elections. We have private bookings for functions. They can be birthdays, engagements, weddings wakes, Queensland Fire and Emergency Services hold training and public information sessions in the hall.
Other events, such as hosting the Darling Downs Tractor Trek which is happening later in the year, other fundraising events, and this year the Dalveen Film Society will be supporting the Apple and Grape Festival by screening two Italian theme films during the festival week. We’ve hosted recently a small horse festival show as part of the Drought Resilience Tour. And today it’s being used for free haircuts prior to the return to school and that’s been put on by the Granite Belt Neighbourhood Centre.

[00:04:13] Kathryn: That’s quite a list. No wonder you needed to have list in front of you there Nathan.

[00:04:17] Nathan: I know. I couldn’t commit all that to memory.

[00:04:20] Kathryn: There are many halls that serve as community hubs in the rural communities and the villages right across the Southern Downs region. And we were hearing about the halls and the rural fire sheds a couple of years ago, being used as hubs during the drought to distribute water to people who needed it. And then we were hearing about the halls during the bush fires as a meeting place for the community to share information and to share management plans as well. So there are lots of things happening in these halls across the region. Coming back to the Dalveen Hall, how else does the Dalveen Hall, this whole establishment here, benefit the community as well as the individuals who live locally?

[00:05:07] Nathan: Well, during the drought, most of the water distribution in the southern end of the Granite Belt was carried out through associations like Granite Belt Water Relief. I would say that our club played a vital part in sustaining the mental health of the local community by providing a community hub where people could come together to enjoy a drink and a meal and chat with other people going through similar situations. In terms of the other natural disasters like bushfire, the Dalveen Hall and the oval is recognised by Southern Downs Regional Council as a neighbourhood safe place. During the bush fires of 2019 we had a number of people turn up, but unfortunately we weren’t able to operate as a, a safe place because power to the village had been cut. A neighborhood safe place should be able to provide a place for people that have come together during times of natural disasters to share and receive information and feel safe. It was after this, that the hall committee got together with the Dalveen Rural Fire Brigade and decided to get to seek funding together for the supply and installation of backup generator power for both the shed and the hall in the event of power outages. And it’s hoped we will be successful in seeking grant funding to make this happen at some point in the future. In terms of the other community benefits over the years, the Dalveen Hall committee has been an active advocate for the community and serves as an unofficial, I guess you call it a progress association for the village. So the whole is the community heart of our village. And it’s home to an active and proud community. Council recently developed an urban design framework for the village in consultation with some key stakeholder groups like the Dalveen Hall and the fire brigade and the school. And also the Dalveen locals. So during the development of this urban design framework or UDF, a key message from the community was the desire for council to continue to improve and upgrade community meeting spaces and support local community groups. Through this framework, the hall has also advocated promoting Dalveen as the gateway to the Granite Belt, investigating the possibility of a new tourist drive commencing at Dalveen, developing heritage trail linking local Dalveen heritage sites, upgrading the toilets at Jim Mitchell Park, exploring the opportunity of installing coin operated barbecues in the park with those funds being invested back into community projects, investigating the potential to deliver additional community units to the town centre as part of the new planning scheme and that’s to allow our local residents to age in place, supporting the club in grant applications for the installation of power and water to the oval to allow for RV friendly camping outside of use by the Dalveen Rural Fire Brigade and council as a neighbourhood safe place during periods of natural disaster and supporting the club to build an amenities block on the oval for use in these times. Council, as part of their planning review, their planning scheme review have also indicated they’ll review subdivision allotment sizes around the village to create opportunities for people to move to the area and support the village’s existing infrastructure. And whilst these initiatives won’t happen overnight, the urban design framework has given the Dalveen community a voice with council and an opportunity to set its own future direction. A couple of years ago, the Dalveen fire brigade in conjunction with the hall fundraised to install a theatre system in the hall which could be used for fire training purposes, community information nights. The last 12 months has seen the formation of the Dalveen Film Society subcommittee and their success in gaining a grant for the installation of theatre curtains, reverse cycle air con and advertising to the value of about 40,000. So we’re now able to heat the hall during the cooler months, and it does get cold here in Dalveen and provide a more comfortable and pleasant experience for our visitors. The film nights have been incredibly well received across the district and they’ve sparked a wave of media interest. So we’ve had numerous interviews on ABC radio. We’ve had stories in local papers and magazines that have shone a positive light on the Dalveen Hall and the local community. We have the film nights are regularly sold out and they’ve been well supported. And we’ve recently received a grant again from council that will see a new front of house theatre curtain installed as well as some additional sound curtains to the walls prior to our Apple and Grape Festival screenings. So, it’s been a very important part of our community and it’s so much more than a hall. It provides that sort of community hub where people can come together and share stories and experiences and get things off their chest. We’ve had a terrible sort of period in terms of bush fires, drought, and now COVID-19 so, you know, for us locally to be able to supply, uh, to provide a place where people can come and just address any mental health issues they may have as you know, it’s a great facility. It’s a great facility and it’s really well used by the community.

[00:09:34] Kathryn: And it sounds like it’s a really important place for socialising and having fun, relaxing. It’s not all about the seriousness of what’s going on out there.

[00:09:45] Nathan: No. That’s exactly right. So predominantly, you know, we get together once a week on a Friday. We have a fantastic team of volunteers that come together and we have a volunteer cooking roster. They provide a meal, uh, which can be purchased. We have a licensed bar that operates, and we have a pool table and yeah, it’s, it’s a great friendly family friendly social environment that people can come and, yeah get together and enjoy each other’s company.

[00:10:11] Kathryn: Nathan, you’ve referred to back in history a few times in terms of the hall and the Dalveen community. Can you tell us a little bit more about the history of the hall?

[00:10:22] Nathan: I’ll have to credit my mother-in-law for this information because she’s part of the, um, Dalveen Historical Society. So she’s been doing quite a bit of research on the hall and the local, the local area. It’s not quite clear when the first Dalveen Hall was built, but the first Dalveen Easter Sports Day was held on the oval in 1882. It appears that this was also the birth of Dalveen Sports Club. The hall quickly became the hub for a variety of sports and sports related events. By about 1927, the Warwick paper dubbed Dalveen the home of sport. With the oval at the back of the hall and the memorial tennis courts alongside, the hall became a hub for sports and sport related events. The Dalveen Easter Sports drew participants and spectators from the whole district. A Sports Queen was crowned. And a dance was held in the hall at the conclusion of the event. Indeed, the hall gained a reputation actually for having one of the best dance floors in the Warwick district. With the formation of the CWA in the 1920s, the hall became a venue for a variety of functions with catering provided by the CWA ladies. The annual CWA Christmas Tree was held for the first time in 1925. With a picnic afternoon at the hall, the annual Christmas Tree has been held at the hall every year since bringing together families from the Dalveen community. Last Christmas saw the 96th CWA Christmas Tree at the hall with many more to follow. So also travelling moving picture shows in the Dalveen Hall were popular with the local community and beyond. While their popularity waned over the years, the recently formed Dalveen Film Society brought their echoes of the past alive with bi-monthly film nights in the hall last year. Sometime in about 1937 to 38 the Dalveen Hall, the original Dalveen Hall was destroyed by fire. The community quickly set about erecting, a new hall with locally donated timber which was milled free of charge at the Dalveen saw mill. Members of the Sports Club and the CWA helped the builder Jack Smith when needed. Jack Smith conveniently lived next door to the hall grounds. The final task was construction of the brick stand for the copper, just outside the kitchen of the new hall. The bricks were made at the Dalveen brick work and laid by a local brick layer. The fire under the copper needed to be lit early so that the hot water could be provided for tea and coffee, as well as washing up. The boiling water was carried into the hall in old kerosene tins. The new hall was opened in 1939 in time for the annual Dalveen Easter Sports Day. All through its history the Dalveen Hall has been a venue for weddings, entertainment, community meals, celebrations, weddings, birthdays, and funerals and wakes.

[00:12:47] Kathryn: That’s an incredible history isn’t it? Really fascinating bringing in, the local skilled people to help out with the volunteers, to get that back on track.

[00:12:58] Nathan: It was quite a, it was quite a village, actually. It had its own saw mill. And it had a brick works and yeah, it was, yeah, it was a very, very, um, very sort of vibrant community.

[00:13:10] Kathryn: Yeah, sounds like it still is a very vibrant community.

[00:13:14] Nathan: Very much, so.

[00:13:15] Kathryn: Even though we’re living in a different world in a way aren’t we with a lot of these goods and chattels get transported from further afield these days rather than each community supplying them to themselves. Wow. What are your hopes, Nathan, for the hall as we move into the future?

[00:13:34] Nathan: Well, I’d like to see the Dalveen Hall Committee to continue to advocate for the community, and provide a community hub where people can come together and enjoy each other’s company through the good times and the bad times. I’d also like to see Council continue to see the value in community halls and recognise their importance within the comm unity. And I’d like to see Southern Downs Regional Council continue to support, improve and upgrade these community meeting spaces and support the local community groups that, that use the hall. I’d also like to see the hall source a passive income into the future. And we’re looking at doing that as I mentioned earlier, by providing some RV friendly camping around the perimeter of the oval so that we can continue to provide the services that we do to the community at little cost.
So that’s been recognised as well in the urban design framework and Council are supporting us with that. We have some other things as well. Some, some future goals and aspirations. One of them is to seek some grant funding to upgrade our kitchen to a commercial standard. And, um, there’s also some talk about the possibility down the track of subject to Council approval um, building a drive-in movie theatre on the oval.

[00:14:42] Kathryn: Wow, that would be wonderful wouldn’t it?

[00:14:44] Nathan: That’d be just something a bit different and unique. And I think unique for this area. So, you know, we could alternate between once a month we could have screenings once a month. We could do one inside and one outside. So yeah, something just a little bit different.

[00:14:55] Kathryn: Yeah, it sounds wonderful and it’s really great to have those hopes and goals for the future to work towards and have that collaboration and those partnerships happening in the community.

[00:15:06] Nathan: Absolutely.

[00:15:07] Kathryn: Nathan, is there anything else about the community or the hall that you wanted to share before we wrap up?

[00:15:13] Nathan: I guess Dalveen’s, it’s a very unique place. I grew up in the country. I grew up in a sort of a town of 4,000. Dalveen’s quite a small little village, but it’s, it’s unique in the fact that we have a very sort of proud, active community that are very pro Dalveen. It’s a remarkable place to live. And it’s just nice to be part of that. It’s nice to be part of a community that really want to push things forward and progress things. It makes doing it quite easy. And it’s in, in this sort of environment, you know, in a small village, we have a number of organisations. We have the Dalveen Rural Fire Brigade. We have the P & C. We have the Dalveen Sports Club and other organisations as we mentioned, the CWA. The lovely thing is, is that when someone puts the call out, everyone puts their hand up and it doesn’t matter how many hats you wear. You’ll quite often find that, you know, you’ve got members of the CWA that are members of the fire brigade that are members of the sports club that are members of the P and C, you know, but everyone puts their hand up and nothing’s a problem.
So when it comes to organising stuff, it’s shared by a lot of people and it’s quite easy to do. And I think that’s something very unique and it’s something that, in these days, you know, life is busy, but we always manage to get things done and, you know, I love it. I think it’s great. I always used to be on the lookout for nice place to live. I moved here and I’ve never looked since.

[00:16:30] Kathryn: Thank you very much Nathan for sharing your story. I think that a lot of individuals and communities can be inspired by how Dalveen is really nurturing their community and protecting it into the future.

[00:16:42] Nathan: It just goes to show that you can achieve anything. I mean, if you look around here at the assets, on this block of land, they’ve all been provided for and fundraised by the community, and there’s a lot of infrastructure here, and, um, unique place, great place to live. And like you say, an inspiration around the halls, anything’s possible. You’ve just gotta, work hard and, and have a vision, I guess,

[00:17:04] Kathryn: And chip away at it gradually.

[00:17:05] Nathan: Chip away gradually, that’s correct.

[00:17:07] Kathryn: Nathan, if any listeners would like to follow up on anything you’ve said by contacting one of those organisations or finding out a bit more about the Dalveen Hall, where’s the best place for them to go?

[00:17:18] Nathan: Well, we don’t have a website at this stage. There is a Dalveen Sports Club Facebook Page. There’s also a Dalveen Film Society Facebook Page and a Dalveen Community Facebook Page. Uh, the Dalveen Sports Club also produces a monthly newsletter called the Windy Ridge which is distributed locally via the post office and email. Contact details for committee members are sign posted at the hall. Alternatively, you can contact the Sports Club via Messenger and Facebook, and we can give you the relevant information.

[00:17:46] 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.

Connection to your Community with Marco Gliori

CONNECTION TO YOUR COMMUNITY

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

SEASON 2: EPISODE 1

GUEST: Marco Gliori, Councillor for Southern Downs Regional Council; Performance Poet

PUBLISHED: 7th February 2022

Marco Gliori

[00:00:00] Marco: There’s a voice to tell a story that could stir a restless soul
There’s a voice to call the final pass or toast a winning goal
There’s a voice that seems to lift the horse and rider past the post
Some voices whisper wisdom and some cannot help but boast
I have a voice for poetry though some dispute that claim
The rhythm rattles through me and I squarely place the blame
On the contours of the landscapes that caress me down the track
And the voices of the characters that echo when I’m back.

Kathryn: Today’s episode is a really fun one with Marco Gliori, chatting all about the things he loves most – the arts, culture and connection to family and community. It was an immense joy to record this episode with Marco which you’ll understand as you listen in to our conversation. Marco has a wonderful knack for inspiring others by sharing his optimism and enthusiasm. Regarded as one of Australia’s premier performers of bush verse, Marco is also a councillor for the Southern Downs Regional Council. In this episode, Marco shares not only his original verse, but also his thoughts on how individuals and communities can get through tough times.

[00:01:32] Kathryn: Hello Marco. It’s great to have you on the podcast

[00:01:35] Marco: Great to be here Kathryn

[00:01:38] Kathryn: Marco could we start this episode by introducing you. If you could explain to our listeners what your connection is with the Southern Downs Region.

[00:01:49] Marco: Thank you. At the moment I’m a councillor on the Southern Downs Regional Council. I was born here in 1963 at the Warwick Base Hospital. And my father is the reason we arrived in Warwick. He was an Italian migrant who came over after the Second World War and got a job as most Italians did at that time concreting. And they sent him to Lake Tinaroo in North Queensland to work on the irrigation up there. He met my mother Audrey a dairy farmer’s daughter whose farm now lies on the bottom of Lake Tinaroo. And they fell in love and took off down through Queensland working at Moogerah Dam, Coolmunda Dam, Leslie Dam. They had a child at every dam I might add and I was lucky enough to be born while Dad worked at Leslie Dam and we lived out there for the first two years of my life at Leslie Dam. One of the earliest memories I have is from that time living out there. I must’ve only been two or maybe three and running down the slopes and leaping into the Sandy Creek into the arms of my father who was squatted in Sandy Creek with all his work mates and the families with a stubbie of beer in one hand and a rollie cigarette in his other but he still managed to catch me. And they were rejoicing in the water being released from Leslie Dam for one of the first times I guess and flowing out down through Sandy Creek and out into the black soil plains. It was a really joyful time, a happy time, a hopeful time. And now when our dams are full as they are now that memory comes back to me. It’s an everlasting memory and a very joyful one. I grew up in Warwick. We moved into town after the dam was completed. And I went to Central State School, Warwick State High School. I had no real plans for life. And then Dad actually passed away two weeks before my 18th birthday. And the last thing I remember him saying was “You got to get a good bloody job. You got to get a good bloody job.” And of course he meant a career. So after Dad passed away I applied for everything that looked like an exciting career – the army, the air force, the Navy and I was actually accepted into the Queensland police force. So I had 10 years in the Queensland police force. So I attained the rank of Detective Senior Constable and had a great career. I really did enjoy it but there was something else that had me chomping at the bit to give a dream a go. And my dream was spoken word poetry. My father was a craftsman and I believe that while I wasn’t a craftsman like him, someone who could chisel a 22 rifle out of a piece of pine timber, I did have that ability to be tenacious, to be persistent, to take an idea and mould it. And I did that with my poetry, and my mother, by singing country music around the house, something as simple as that, sowed in me the rhythm of the ballad. So I left the police force and didn’t have a clue how I was going to do it but started becoming a performance poet as my job. And I was lucky enough to be contracted by the Queensland and Victorian Arts Councils. I performed over 3000 performances for them over a decade. I travelled on the road with my family. And this of course led into many more opportunities – spoken word festivals, the Maleny Folk Festival which is now the Woodfordia, the Tamworth Country Music Festival, the Outback Festival at Winton. I was flying around the country doing after-dinner guest speaking spots with my original poetry and it was just a wonderful way to earn a living. And I did that for 30 years and after 30 years on the road and my children had grown up I decided I needed to stay at home for a year. And it was during those first few weeks where I just started putting my feet up and thinking I don’t know what I’m going to do but I’m going to enjoy it, people started saying you should run for council. You should run for council if you’re here and you’re staying home. Oh how ridiculous I have no political aspirations. I have no political agendas. And after enough people tell you that you think “Well why not give it a go.” Something I was never afraid to do was step off the edge. So that’s why I arrive at the moment as a councillor for the Southern Downs Regional Council and loving my interaction with all the community and especially the arts and culture community.

[00:06:00] Kathryn: You would have seen the region go through various droughts and other natural disasters and other challenging times, and the region in particular more recently has been on a recovery journey following the bush fires that we had in 2019 and 2020. And there was drought before that. And of course since then we have had floods and we’ve had mouse plagues and we’ve had the COVID pandemic. Recently the Southern Downs Regional Council partnered with the Queensland and the Australian governments to celebrate the resilient spirits of this community. And we developed a photo exhibition called Hope and Growth and the images and the stories from that exhibition celebrating the resilient spirit have been on display at various locations across the region where you also performed one of your original verses that honours volunteers which I think was just so apt. There are so many volunteers involved in managing and recovering from disaster. I’m curious about when and why did you write that poem Volunteers?

[00:07:15] Marco: I had seen so many volunteers on the road travelling around doing festivals, events, places that had experienced bush fires, floods. They continue to be the inspiration within the community to create community, something to be proud of and to be proud of because they don’t require any recognition. I remember about 20 years ago we had a bushfire right here beside my place. It had started down in the gully with two electrical wires connecting up in the trees that were growing through the trees at that stage. It wasn’t on my property but it was at the bottom of a gully that led to my property. And I was in town one afternoon. No one was home. They were all at school and at work and I was at home, ducked into town, and driving back I saw my whole mountain in a big cloud of of gray smoke. I thought “What have I done? I’ve left something on.” I thought my house was gone. It was that ominous driving up towards where the gully started and it’s 1.2 kilometres from the road to my house. And that was a very long 1.2 kilometres but as I begin accelerating to the bottom of the gully I realised that the whole gully’s ablaze heading up towards my house. I didn’t know the wires had touched and that had caused it at that stage but about 30 meters up where it is, it’s a road but it’s literally my driveway into my house, I saw 20 people with wet bags. I saw a D2 dozer driving out of my driveway. This fire had only just started. I’m thinking “Where did these people come from?” And I was so lucky. They were actually having a firefighting course with the Hermitage staff right across from the fence from where I live at the state government research station which is closed at the moment. So I was just so lucky and I realised that these are the people that go out when the fires start, when the floods start and they they are so happy to just, they were so humble about helping me, but that fire burned for three days in my gully. The barrier that they formed, the safety barrier with the D2 dozer, the firebreak, saved my house from burning and my kids cried literally for days. I had three little girls at that time. They’d met all the wallabies and echidnas and the birds that lived in that gully and to just see that smouldering for three days, the tragedy, the psychological stress that that can place on children, families that are surrounded by fires and the aftermath is a devastating thing for a community. And to have this exhibition gave those people who were just on the frontline at the time the opportunity to stand back and relive that feeling of the ominous coming of the fire, the urgency there. And they could actually talk back then through their experiences in a calm, reflective way and say wow I didn’t realise it looked like that. So we had people on the frontline, the photographers, snapping history. And that is what’s important with an exhibition like this. Not just that other people get to share but those who were so entrenched in the experience get to sit back, breathe deep and say “How lucky were we? What have we to be grateful for?” And of course the great thing is we were grateful for the volunteers who step out there and save us. So this is that poem:

When your weary hands are trembling and the load appears immense,
When trouble like a Terrier comes scratching at your fence,
When waves of devastation flush your spirit from its core,
And common sense would have you kneeling down in very awe.
Watch them come with helping hands,
Rolling forth like marching bands,
Against the odds they’ll persevere
And stand their ground to Volunteer.
From somewhere west of nowhere, by the truckload they’ll appear.
Leaping down to fight beside you, at your shoulder, by your rear,
Armed with all the best intentions, firing gestures of goodwill,
Then retreating to the trenches when the spotlight starts to spill.
They couldn’t give two hoots for fame.
Their ever-ready boots are game.
Time is wasting! Crank the gears,
Saved again by Volunteers.
My Mother knitted jumpers in a cake stall down the street,
And volunteered a smile to every person she would meet.
To her, their grateful eyes were worth a thousand Souvenirs,
For twenty years she sat there with her mates the Volunteers.
No matter where their anchor lands,
They dedicate their helping hands,
For hands are valued more than cheer
When someone needs a Volunteer.
Now all around the world we see the troops are checking in,
To lend a hand as old Miss Fortune tries her best to win,
And should the future swallow us, the message will be passed
To start evacuating and, one guess who’s going last.
As the boats that harbour rich and poor
Go scrambling from each fatal shore,
The final hand to cast them clear
Will belong, no doubt to a Volunteer.

[00:12:26] Kathryn: Thanks Marco it’s a really powerful poem. I’m curious do you know how many times you’ve performed that one?

[00:12:33] Marco: I think the first time I performed it was at a cancer fundraisers breakfast – The Big Morning Tea in Toowoomba. And of course the organisers there said “Can we have a copy of that?” because my mother had that about her character. It wasn’t something that you went out and did. It was something that was ingrained in you from generations who had seen war time, who had experienced almost starvation in some areas, who had gone to school with dripping on bread you know as their lunches. That was their school experience. And here they were just instilling that in my generation. And I think sometimes, I wonder, if my generation has had it so good, so lucky in this fortunate, prosperous time in Australian history, that sniff of wealth for the working class of mines exploding in big wages for inexperienced, unqualified people that we’ve had this great moment in history where where we’ve been surrounded by abundance, a smorgasbord of opportunity. And now with COVID maybe it’s time for us to stand up as a generation, to refuel the CWAs, to rejoin the Lions and the Rotaries and the Apexes, to get out there and activate as is happening with our country halls, with the great Festival of Small Halls shows that have happened recently. That wasn’t just shows for entertainment. That gave an opportunity for the rural fire brigade to raise money, for the local schools to set up and raise money, for the local community to realise why those halls were created and how valuable they were in war time, of times of tragedy, communities would come together. And now when we stay home where we often don’t go out we have everything delivered to us whether it be on television, we have Facebook, we have delivery from restaurants. Maybe it’s time to get back out there in the community and let people know that we’re there to support them.

[00:14:33] Kathryn: It’s really interesting. The current research from more recent natural disasters is saying that one of the most protective factors that we have is to be involved with our community. And that’s backed up by what you’re saying there Marco, that historically people were really involved. That was part of their normal every day routine or just what they did getting involved with clubs and helping out. And certainly when we look at, for example the arts, which is another way of getting involved in the community, there are some benefits there for people’s wellbeing, being involved in various ways. I’m wondering if you can comment on that. As a whole community having the arts as a resource can be useful but also for the individual.

[00:15:27] Marco: The art galleries, our two regional art galleries, Stanthorpe Regional Art Gallery, Warwick Regional Art Gallery here, it became a sanctuary for me during COVID and during my early days as a councillor trying to grasp with all the political strategies, with all the information you’re asked to go through and work out some pretty important decisions. It was great to walk into those galleries and meet my creative workmates on a completely different level. I’m no visual artist but they became a sanctuary. And I think that opportunity exists for everyone in the community. If you’re having a tough time, if your kids are sitting around home worrying and asking you those questions, take them to a library, take them to an art gallery. Have a look around, see how you feel after 20 minutes in there. It does soothe the soul as it does the artists who create them. While you’re there, ask them about workshops, ask them what’s available for the kids. We have programs coming up in both art galleries for students, for young children, for students from headspace are allowed to come in and do some wonderful creative workshops that release emotions. And this is what it can do for you. When you go to your libraries ask them about the storytelling workshops. Ask them if there’s any poets and storytellers coming to do workshops. There’s an opportunity for you to tell your story. And this is what’s so important, I think, in times of adversity, is that you as a community member know that your story is being heard because they all matter. Every story matters. And once we all connect with each other’s story we have empathy. And once you have empathy you can come up with common sense solutions to soothe your society. To say “Well what do we need, really?” We need food. We need shelter. We need mateship. And that’s what you get from your volunteer groups. That’s what you get when you go into an art gallery community. I’ve always found it welcoming, wanting to talk with you about what’s happening from a visionary perspective in your community. What ideas do you have with recycling? What ideas do you have for your landscapes and waterways that sustain us? Do you want to just go out and clean by the Condamine River or Quart Pot Creek? Do you want to go to Artworks at the railway station in Stanthorpe and join in with their workshops or are you retired? There’s something there for everyone. Do you want to act and sing a song? Go to the Stanthorpe Little Theatre when they have their open nights. Warwick doesn’t have an amateur theatre group at the moment. That’s something I think that we could do up this end of town. And I think that once you begin to do that, once you get folk clubs back in the pubs, once you get school groups have their string ensembles or their bands playing in the art galleries, those sorts of things bring in the fathers and the mothers, bring in the students who are friends of those playing, bring your community in who just like seeing young people express themselves. And there can never be enough of that. And the one thing we don’t want to happen at the moment with COVID is that we become so fearful that we forget how to do that. And I think that is one of the things people worry about, “Well I’ll just stay home.” But in actual fact we’re going to have to go out eventually. So let’s be prepared to set that example that is about empathy, that is about sharing, that is about creative workshops, mental health workshops. Just discussing how you feel and if there’s an opportunity or your local hall to turn up because they might have a rural perspective with characters who are isolated on farms. Go along. Just sit there. You don’t have to say anything but it’s amazing how many people hang around afterwards and just keep talking and have that cup of tea because they’ve made the effort and you have got to make the effort.

[00:19:24] Kathryn: I think you brought up some really really important words there. There’s creativity, connection, understanding, empathy, being heard – because sometimes we think when we go to an art gallery or to a workshop that it’s about hearing or seeing somebody else’s work but there’s also that opportunity for our own expression to come through which I think is really important too. So it sounds like there are lots of opportunities across this Southern Downs Region for people no matter what age they are or what interests they have to to get involved in some way in the arts through some public groups and public opportunities. But perhaps even if they’re not feeling comfortable to get out and about there might be some creative ways for people to get involved with the arts in their own home or perhaps with a small group of friends.

[00:20:21] Marco: Yeah I mean there I was just telling you before we started this interview, I gave you a bottle of my homemade mango chutney. That for me is creative. I never sit down and make the same recipe anytime. I go to Sam’s fruitery down on the way to Stanthorpe and I get boxes of fruit or I might go to another local produce place and buy stuff that I, and I just come home. And for me it’s always a mixed match of different flavors and spices. I love doing that and what do I do? I take those bottles out and give them to people. I give them to people at art gallery launches. I give them to people like yourself Kathryn who share, are willing to share their stories and capture the stories of our Southern Downs. That in itself is an expression of interest in other people’s lives. We have people who go out and mow the verges of of our footpaths, who mow the sides of our roads. They do that simply because they’ve got a tractor and a slasher. They don’t have to do it. They’re often not compensated for it. They don’t do it because council can’t do it. They do it because they want to show a pride in where they live. I remember doing a story some years ago on stage in Brisbane that involved an Aboriginal mate of mine by the name of Dusty who was a radio announcer in Brisbane. And he was there in the audience so I thought “Oh there’s Dusty”, so I told this yarn about him and me going hunting in the Gold Coast Hinterland. And it had a one-liner at the end and everybody laughed including Dusty. As we’re having a beer after the show Dusty said “Oh that was a great yarn ya funny bugger.” And we were just laughing and he said “But you know that couldn’t have been me down there on the Gold Coast.” And I said “What do you mean?” He said “That couldn’t have been me down the Gold Coast, huntin’ down the Gold Coast.” And we’re laughing but I couldn’t figure out what he meant. I said “I don’t get you, what do you say?” And he says “I wouldn’t have been hunting down the Gold Coast Marco. I’m a river Murri. I’m from Charleville.” And he was so proud of where he came from and he had no doubt where his soul and spirit was attached to. I didn’t grow up with that. I floated down the Condamine River on a tractor tyre but my education was about the animals that lived at the river. But there was no obligation placed on me as a human being to connect myself to the landscapes and the waterways that sustained me. Those stories of Tiddalik the dreamtime frog, beautiful colourful stories that Indigenous Australians told around the campfires of this country under the canopy of the million star motel for thousands of years connected them in a spiritual way to where they lived. And I wonder how many of us can truly say we’ve found that. And Dusty, in that with his great sense of humour, in just a passing comment didn’t have to convince me. It was so obvious that he was always going to be connected to the rivers of Charleville cause that’s where his people came from. And as our young Anglo Saxon society grows and evolves I hope that we find that because if we don’t we’re going to be in real trouble. When I came back after that, hearing that from Dusty and just thinking “What do I know about this place where I live really? Why aren’t I bragging?” I brag it here.

Yeah I come from Warwick, you know Warwick.
Old people retire there.
Young people can’t wait to leave there.
And some actually do.
Up the street boots wearing cowboy hats climb into big cars and dirty utes.
That smell of oil, cattle and KFC.
Tough teenagers with skinny elbows stuck out the windows of 83 Geminis
Cruise past the shoppin’ centre shoutin’ “Hey boofhead” to a lucky mate.
Chattin’ up two Grade 10 babes
Fiddlin’ with that cool silver neck chain hot off the $2 stand at Silly Solly’s.

That was my teenage years. I remember that so clearly, just cracking laps up and down the street, playing footy. But there’s another part to our existence that I think when we sit in these quiet moments that we’re having through COVID, when we have time to reflect, we should think about who we are, where we come from and how do we connect to the planet. How do we connect to the Southern Downs? When I came back from working with Dusty I wrote a poem. I still remember the first verse:

I was born beside the Condamine
She is my dreaming place.
Within me deep her stories flow
She’s the river I embrace.
Cascading west from the Great Divide
Across the Darling Downs
Over waterfalls, through sandy creeks,
Meandering past towns.
Her vital veins injecting life
Where the morning’s misty air
Serenely cloaks the farming land
And houses cluttered there.
And Mother Nature’s weary voice,
I’ve heard her weep and pine
Whisper solemnly to thirsty humans
By the Condamine.

That was a poem that I wrote after talking with Dusty but I brought it home and then got the kids from Central State School to recite it on the banks of the Condamine River. And you can actually go online and watch them reciting that. So for me that’s another way of sharing your creativity with the community. You might write something, it could be a play, a song, a poem.

It’s where you’re from that counts old mate
The highway home, the boundary gate
That street your mind meanders down
The view by night of twinkle town
That sparkles in your very core, no matter where you wash ashore
What fuels your blood you can’t deny
The rivers flow, the rumbling sky
Granite rocks, the harsh terrains
Ranges rapping black soil plains
Cascading falls in a sandy creek
That murmurs every time you speak

That was a poem called Pride of Place and I was asked by Ron Bellingham, the former mayor of Warwick, when I was asked to write a poem pre-amalgamation that remembered where we all came from. And that was his phrase – Pride of Place. And I’ve actually adopted it. It’s a wonderful way to look at where you live. Do you have a pride in the place where you live?

[00:26:36] Kathryn: So that sounds like that’s about connection to place, the geography, the natural world. And there are also other aspects of the region that will help people to do that, will support them to do that such as the local festivals and the local resources and the community events and the people connecting to each other.

[00:27:00] Marco: Yeah, you can join the Landcare group tomorrow. Go and join and you will know exactly what I’m talking about. They will take you to all those places that are going to connect you to where you belong to right now. They’ll take you up into the mountains. They’ll take you to the rural places that are growing crops that want to make sure that the wrong weeds are taken out, that makes sure the environment is healthy. And they do it from not just a natural perspective, a nature loving perspective, but an economic perspective. You can do it with the different festivals and events we have that are often in beautiful places aren’t they? Like where do we have them? We have them in parks. We have them where people want to get together under a tree and by riverside. And we have that ability here to celebrate our seasons through events and events are essential to the way we live, the celebration of the harvest always comes with the events. The events industry, the arts and culture industry has had COVID come down on it like a guillotine. People don’t realise how important the events in culture industry, not just the people on stage but the backstage people, the people who own the tents where the performance has happened, the hospitality industry that suffered, the local accommodation houses that are suddenly empty and have to pay staff. There are so many things that go along with this art and entertainment industry that we’ve created and they often don’t get the recognition because they’re not a shopfront, they’re not a farm turning up with a truckload of produce. They just walk on stage and do what they do. But what you’ll find in times of adversity like COVID, the arts and entertainment industry will often produce its best work. And I think coming out of this COVID when we’re all back on deck we will value them more than ever. But don’t forget them now because I can assure you many of my friends who have mortgages, who are just struggling, are finding it more and more difficult to get up off the canvas. And the way we react now to what we’re going through, which is the great battle of our time, I mean my father lost millions in his generation, my mum, through two wars, and this is our great battle across the planet. How we react to this as a society will see how our children look upon us in history and who they become. And if they can be inspired by this rather than see us talk the world down, be negative, then we have hope that they will see the meaning of trust, resilience and all those catch phrases we use. Well we might have to really get busy using them, experiencing them, showing them off and letting kids know that it’s okay. This will be part of history one day and let’s hope the other side of what we’re experiencing with climate change, that that would be part of history as well. But we need our generation who has had so much prosperity, we need to knuckle down and get busy because that’s what happened after two world wars. They were just told to knuckle down, get busy. And they were keen to get on living because they’d seen so much of dying. And we haven’t seen that yet. We have been fortunate that we’ve had the facilities to manage this COVID pandemic better than past generations. How many million died with the Spanish flu? But we need to also remember that we’ve been in a very fortunate few decades especially in Australia, not across the world, but in Australia, and we, as a country, can set an example as we have done so far I believe with the way we react. And we need to give that example to our kids to take into their future so they can say “This is where I’m from, this is what I believe in, my parents did so much for me.” Like we talk about our generations, they went to war, they sacrificed, they built a nation back from a war torn world, And they built us up into something successful, inspirational around the planet. Let’s see if we can do the same thing.

[00:31:24] Kathryn: And I think when we look at the bushfire recovery and the whole cycles that we go through with natural disasters, just using the bushfire as an example, there’s devastation and we can feel hopeless. We can feel like this is never ending. Similar with the drought. Those two events were very closely connected of course. And through that photo exhibition that I mentioned or that we mentioned a little bit earlier, we can see that there is re-growth, that things do change. Things don’t stay the same always. But there are things that we can do to invest in that recovery and to make that more successful. And it sounds like what you’re saying with COVID at the moment is there are things that we can do to to invest in that recovery as well for ourselves, for our communities and for our world. And thinking about the arts in terms of that COVID recovery journey as well, that we can look towards times with some optimism, we can invest our time and our energy and our hopefulness into when the Jumpers and Jazz in July festival will be a really large vibrant event or perhaps it will be a little bit different, the Snowflakes in Stanthorpe Festival, the Apple and Grape Festival. And of course there are lots of other festivals that happen across the region as well so I’ve just mentioned a few of them.

[00:33:08] Marco: I think that what we can do is enjoy the quiet moments and we’ll often be inspired not by something grand but by a gesture, a moment where somebody’s kind to you, where families are opening their hearts to other families who might be suffering and those things like you said, words you used there like optimism, they’re pretty big, they’re pretty big character traits if you can have them in times of stress. And the community is always inspired and they’ll ask “Well how can that person be so optimistic?” And if they ask the question, they’re asking the question of themselves “What can I do to be optimistic?” Well maybe I can go out and volunteer. Maybe I can turn up and create something in an art workshop or pop down to Artworks Granite Belt, pop into the Warwick Art Gallery. Ask them what’s coming up, what can I come along and have a go at and create? And it’s amazing once you focus on the little things, the big things take on their own momentum and they just become as I said, part of history. The event mightn’t happen this year. It will happen next year. And that is optimism. That’s just saying “Well not today but tomorrow.” If farmers have lived with it all their lives. They go “Oh I was gonna plough that paddock today, well look at that beautiful rain. I’ll just have to sit back. I can’t do it. It doesn’t suit me but I’m going to have to put up with it. I might want to sell them cattle but the prices aren’t right.” So I mean this is rural Australia. we We deal with those things all the time and that’s why as you can see people are flocking to rural Australia. You can’t buy a house around here at the moment because they want that pace. They want that lifestyle. They want that little community that we’re talking about going out and catching up with people, riding your bike around the street, going to a local park that’s less than 2, 3, 4, 5 minutes drive anyone from anywhere in town. They’re pretty exceptional attributes for a region to have. We’re very lucky.

[00:35:15] Kathryn: Marco what keeps you optimistic?

[00:35:20] Marco: Well I think you can only go with what’s around you and that’s family. I try to do my best with my family, to keep them close, to keep them optimistic. I think if you inspire those closest to you it might trickle out. If you have mates that are down, go and check on them. That keeps me optimistic because you’ll always find someone who’s doing it worse off than you. It doesn’t take far to look. What keeps me optimistic is seeing the volunteer groups at small halls who are putting on events, who are doing the little things right and saying “We’re happy, we had 80 people here tonight and gee that was good.” They’re not after thousands. They’re not after big accolades or front page headlines. They’re just after what we’re talking about – community – and if they can get the 10 neighbours that live around that hall to come in and celebrate. My daughter got married in the Freestone country hall, the best wedding I’ve ever been to. And it was so because it had that attachment to what that hall was about and that’s creating community. Everybody said “That was just so relaxed in there wasn’t it.” And so they’re the things that keep me optimistic, is that you’ve got more people than not willing to have a go at creating something little that will build into something big.

[00:36:40] Kathryn: Now if any of the listeners are thinking, after hearing you talk so enthusiastically about local arts opportunities and volunteering opportunities, if anyone’s thinking “I might have a go at something” what advice do you have for them?

[00:36:58] Marco: Make a plan. Write things down, get someone else to run it by you. I had the wonderful Spoken Word Festival at Killarney where they approached me and we had a lovely chat around and off they went and the plan came, went stunningly. It was a great weekend. I think discuss these ideas with people who can help you. I can help you. The art gallery directors can help you. The librarians can point you in the right direction. Just ask. I mean, text me, email me and I’ll point you in the right direction. And there are a lot of council staff for example that can say “Well you know that project that you’re thinking about, if you can really articulate that well, there’s a bunch of funding coming up specifically for that style of event. Why don’t you put in for it?” But be prepared. So clarify your idea. Clarify what it’s going to cost, how are you going to fund it, what local events coordinators you might use or entertainers or hospitality people and get some quotes. Think about how you might manage that event both financially and artistically and logistically. And if you have trouble, the council staff are always happy to help you run through ways that you can put that submission together and then get some funding for it. I never applied for funding myself because I figured “Well, I know what show I’m going to do, I’ve got a bit of a profile so I’m going to put up some posters.” And I did. I loved that part of it you know, printing the posters, putting them in newspapers and backing myself as a performance artist. At some stage you’ve got to back yourself and that’s what I love doing. So if you’ve got a show and you’ve got five artists who want to perform on that show, you might collaborate with them and say “Let’s all put in some funds and have a crack at this. We might make some good money out of it.”

[00:38:53] Kathryn: So many opportunities for people who just want to have a taste of what some of the arts might be like. So there are often free workshops or low-cost workshops around but likewise there are also quite a number of fee for service type workshops that people can participate in either through these festivals or in-between times.

[00:39:15] Marco: That’s right we have two amazing art trials, Granite Belt Art Trail, Condamine Art Trail and they happen in different formats but generally there’s opportunities to do workshops. So you might create candles in one workshop and that’s couple of hours you’ve created a candle. Yep I love that or not for me but I enjoyed it I’ll go and try something else. Or you could do some painting workshops. You could do sketching. You can do textiles. And there are always artists there who are willing to mentor and help you through. Those sip and paint workshops – how popular are they! They’re always full very quickly. I think there’s more of the sipping than the painting that people are being attracted to but that’s great because that’s what CWA halls are based on – craft and cups of teas. And let’s have an event that’s based on this and that’s what artists are realising too, that if they can get out into those country halls, we’ll do anything from drumming workshops to textile workshops.

[00:40:16] Kathryn: Fabulous. Marco is there anything else that you’d like to share about how being involved with the arts or with projects or with volunteering can add great value to people’s lives?

[00:40:28] Marco: Yeah I just think being part of something rather than nothing. That means going out in the morning you can sit at your table and drink a cup of tea or you walk outside and try and spot that first bird of the morning. Walking down the road as I do with my 18 month old granddaughter, we stop and pick up colourful stones. We pull a bit of a bark off a tree and by the time she gets home she’ll have a collection of stones and barks and leaves and feathers that we find in the grass. And she’s fed a horse and you can’t do that everywhere but you can touch the earth. You can listen for a bird singing. You can smile at someone passing in the street and once you start to do that I think the next step is becoming part of something else other than just where you feel you’re trapped. Sometimes people can often feel isolated and trapped living in units in town. Grow a vegetable garden for goodness sake. We have this abundance of space in our housing blocks still in rural areas, not enough people grow vegetables. So just have a crack. Buy one little punnet of carrots and at least you’ve got something happening that’s regenerating life. And they’re the little things that you can do. I remember there are lots of places of worship or church groups, food vans, St Vincent De Paul’s, your Red Cross places where you can sit behind the counter, go out the back and sort through donations. There are so many places looking for volunteers. Men Sheds – I’m patron of the Warwick Men’s Shed – just going over there and seeing some characters turn up to create and get busy and other characters turn up to sweep the floor and have a cup of tea and work on the computers and do the accounts and everyone is there for one thing mainly, and that’s mateship. And that is the great thing about our culture is it has always promoted mateship. And we need to continue building on the strength that we have in that area which is bringing our community together through mateship.

[00:42:47] Kathryn: So being involved with something rather than nothing sounds like a really great place to start, doesn’t it? And from there building up connections to place and connections to people and connections to community. Marco thank you very much for your time. It’s been a real privilege to have a chat with you today and to record your stories around the arts and around volunteering, the stories around your life as well today for our podcast for the benefit of our communities as they recover from bushfire, from COVID from whatever those stresses might be in their lives. What’s the best way for listeners to contact you or if they’d like to find out a little bit more about you?

[00:43:36] Marco: I would just go through the council website. We’ve got a phone number and an email there.

[00:43:41] Kathryn: And we will include those details in the show notes for the episode.

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 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 2 of this podcast has been jointly funded under the Commonwealth and State Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements 2018.

7 ways to improve your mental health at work

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We spend a lot of our waking hours in the workplace so it’s no surprise that work and personal life impact each other. It’s an issue we mustn’t ignore. Many of us have been trained or at least socialised to separate our ‘professional selves’ from our ‘personal selves’. To put on our ‘worker’ hat at work, our ‘parent’ and ‘partner’ hat at home, and our ‘volunteer’ hat at weekend sports events. We juggle the different parts of ourselves, keeping our guards up and being careful not to cross boundaries. READ “HOW MANY HATS DO YOUR WEAR?”

But can we completely separate the different parts of our lives? And should we? What are the implications, both good and bad? And how can we re-integrate ourselves when we feel like we can’t keep it all together, or when there is a major change in our work or personal lives?

The real mental health issues in the workplace

Employees, managers and business owners are all in the same boat. Where do we even begin to sort out the issues? In late 2018 Bel du Bois from Darling Downs Wellness Therapies and myself surveyed our community. The results were really interesting. 54% of people said that multiple roles and responsibilities was one of the main health and wellness concerns in their workplace. Stress, unrealistic workloads and communication difficulties also rated very highly.

The struggle to keep it all together

I know first hand what it’s like to juggle family and work responsibilities, and *try* to be calm about it all. Many of us struggle with it, yet few of us talk about it openly. We feel pressure to appear to be coping, on top of things, and to have it all together. But pretending everything’s okay doesn’t make the stress go away. Work, family, home and personal health all suffer.

Whose responsibility?

There is increasing pressure on workplaces to address mental health and wellness issues. This is great because instead of sweeping it under the carpet, we’re beginning to talk about, to acknowledge it and to manage it better.

Obviously the responsibility doesn’t sit entirely with our workplaces. We also need to address industry regulations, state and national policy, and cultural norms.

As individuals we also need to take a degree of responsibility for those things within our control – that means taking a good hard look at ourselves, our reactions in stressful situations, our attitudes, our behaviours, and the supports we choose (or don’t choose) to access.

What this means is that to improve mental health we really have to take a multi-tiered Plan of Actionapproach. We must support workplaces and managers and business owners to create a mentally healthy culture. We need to advocate for industry reform, policy and legislation that reflects a mentally healthy culture. And we need to support individuals and groups in our community to develop inner skills and behaviours (that is, the things we can control!) that enhance mental health. Read on for some tips on how you can begin to put mentally healthy actions in place today.

7 ways to improve your mental health at work

1. Remember that you are a human, not a robot. Life isn’t all smooth sailing, blue skies and cheery hearts. You have thoughts and emotions. They are real. You react to the world around you. The world around you reacts to you too.

2. Find your tribe. A supportive, open, caring community around you is what we all need. If you don’t have that, take steps to create it.

3. Build your resilience – physical and mental. The best ways to begin doing this are through exercise, having active hobbies, feeding yourself nutritious food, getting good quality sleep, and developing a powerful mindset.

4. Expand your stress management skills. You can never have too many tools in your “Coping Kit”! Read books and articles on stress management. Go to workshops. Find a counsellor. Listen to podcasts. Do an online course.

5. Find constructive ways to address your workplace issues. This may mean direct communication with your employer, industry, union or association. There may also be changes you can initiate yourself that will make all the difference eg renegotiating your work hours, equipment available for you to do your job, or the length of your lunch break.

6. Make choices that nurture your mental health and physical health. Often it’s the little things that make the biggest difference, such as choosing to go for a walk at lunch time. But sometimes we need to muster up the courage to make the bigger decisions, such as changing jobs or moving locations.

7. Ask for help. If the first person doesn’t support you in the way you need, ask someone else. Keep going until you find the right person. There are so many online resources these days that you’re no longer limited to what’s available in your local area.

Ready for more?

Wellness in the Workplace

If you relate to anything in this post, I’d love you to join me for The Wellbeing Project, a collaboration between myself and Bel du Bois from Darling Downs Wellness Therapies. We’ll be delving into these topics (and more!) in detail in our dynamic, interactive workshop “Wellness in the Workplace” to be held in Warwick on Wednesday 13th March 2019. You’ll get the latest evidence-based information and proven skills and strategies to function at your best in the workplace and in your personal life. You’ll learn techniques to build your resilience, have more energy, manage your work and home stresses, and feel healthier and happier.

Creating and facilitating workshops brings me a lot of joy. I love knowing that I’m making a difference to a room full of people instead of only one person at a time. Bel and I have thoroughly enjoyed our planning meetings at the beautiful cafes around town and we’ve got so much amazingness in store for you. This workshop is definitely not a typical ‘dry’ boring training day!

So …..

Are YOU ready to re-energise, grow your coping skills, discover strategies and techniques to use at work and home, learn ways of communicating effectively with different personalities, and discover resources and supports to guide you into the future? You can have all of this when you choose to take positive action towards better health and wellness at work by investing one day of your life in “Wellness in the Workplace”.

Read more information or make a booking for “Wellness at Work”

More workshops coming soon! Subscribe so you don’t miss out!

Daisy Spoke

Discovering mountain biking as life’s ultimate parallel universe in her middle age, Kathryn Walton shares information and reflections in ‘Daisy Spoke’ that inform, inspire and empower women to a healthy and active lifestyle.

How Many Hats Do You Wear?

I often wonder “How many hats do you wear?” It’s something that goes through my mind because I often struggle with the hats I wear. Some days I think my problem is simply that I have way too many hats, or that some of them just don’t suit me and I should give them away. But other days I’m all over it. On those days I go to bed feeling completely satisfied and know deep down in my heart that I’ve got exactly the right number of hats (and the right types of hats) that I need in life.

Multiple Roles and Responsibilities

“Hats?” you say ….. Well, I’m not talking here about the kinds of hats you wear on your head to keep the sun off or the cold out. Here I’m talking metaphorically about the different roles and responsibilities we each have in life. To list them all would take pages and pages, so here are a few of the hats that I wear and juggle every day:

  • mother, wife, sister, daughter, aunt, cousin, niece
  • friend
  • bushwalker
  • mountain biker, mountain bike instructor
  • innovator, creator, writer
  • business owner, entrepreneur
  • facilitator, counsellor, consultant
  • community member
  • club / association member
  • household manager, cleaner, cook, organiser, shopper, bill payer, transporter
  • supporter, mentor, mentee
  • consumer

The Struggle is Real

Now if life went smoothly all the time, I’m sure I’d have no issue with my hats. But life’s not like that. Life is messy, and chaotic and unpredictable. Routines and plans go out the window as I work my way through Plan A, then Plan B, and Plan C, and then I wonder “Will it ever stop?” I’m juggling a business, home, and a personal life, switching between hats constantly. Sometimes I don’t have a clue which hat to put at the top, and which hat to leave at the bottom of the pile. The struggle is real people! So this leads me again to my question ““How many hats do you wear?” And “How do you juggle the different hats you wear?”

My Crazy Hat Lady Examples

Let me explain my dilemma a bit more with some real life crazy hat lady examples:

  • I hastily throw my ‘entrepreneur hat’ off and grab my ‘mother hat’ as I rush to meet the ambulance that’s taking my son from school to hospital after a playground accident. In A&E I’m balancing my hats on top of each other as I flit between support person, consumer, organiser, business owner, wife and household manager.
  • In my home office I put my ‘writer hat’ on but I’m wearing the ‘organiser hat’ underneath and that’s the one that everyone recognises and gravitates towards. It’s like a beacon that attracts moths on a hot summer night.
  • Sometimes when I’m wearing my ‘mountain biker hat’ or my ‘bushwalker hat’, I unconsciously slip my ‘innovator hat’ on as well. Then off I go with the fairies, blissfully dreaming and creating as I wind my way mindlessly along the bush trails which I know and love.

From Struggle to Juggle

It’s true that I find myself struggling from time to time with the multiple roles and responsibilities I have. But one thing is certain – it definitely pays to check up on the hats you are wearing very regularly. Do they still fit? Are they comfortable? Do you still need all of them, or want all of them? Is there a hat you could happily pass onto someone else who could make better use of it? Is there a new hat you’d like to try on for size? Are you basically happy with the hats you’re wearing and content to keep juggling them as needed? Or would you like to change something? Perhaps improve your juggling skills, or drop a few hats and not bother picking them up, or maybe you’ve got your eye on a new hat you’d like to wear?

Going from ‘struggle’ to ‘juggle’ is a two-part process. Firstly, you need to review the logistical side of the hats you wear. This includes weighing up your priorities, assessing how valuable and feasible each hat is, doing a cost / benefit analysis of each hat, investigating clashes between the hats, and checking how much each hat weighs. Secondly, you need to create a mindset that best serves your health and wellbeing. Are you focusing solely on the heavy weight of one of your hats and neglecting the joy it brings to your life? Or conversely, have you been blinded to the problems your hat brings because you have an unhealthy attachment to it? Think about why you wear the hats you do. If it’s out of habit, unrealistic expectations or fear of letting it go, then it might be time to swap that hat out of your collection and try on something else for size. What other changes could you make to move from ‘struggle’ to ‘juggle’?

What Hats Do You Really Want to Wear?

Doing an audit of the hats you wear can be incredibly freeing and satisfying. You will feel less stressed, more resilient and happier in all areas of your life.

  • So, what hats do you really want to wear?
  • How can you prioritise them?
  • How can you improve your juggling skills and minimise the struggling?

I’d love to hear! SEND ME A MESSAGE

Are you ready to have inspiring conversations, discover the latest and greatest proven techniques to juggle your workload, improve your sleep and manage life’s stresses?

REGISTER FOR “The Wellbeing Project: Wellness in the Workplace”

Wednesday 13th March 2019
Warwick, Queensland, Australia

Daisy Spoke

Discovering mountain biking as life’s ultimate parallel universe in her middle age, Kathryn Walton shares information and reflections in ‘Daisy Spoke’ that inform, inspire and empower women to a healthy and active lifestyle.

Another 5 Things I’ve Learned About Life Through Mountain Biking

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When you open your mind to learning and growing, you discover opportunities everywhere around you. Over the past ten years, mountain biking has become a parallel universe for me to learn about myself and the world around me. As my enthusiasm for this style of learning has developed, so too has my love of mountain biking. I wanted to share my excitement with everyone around me and so I began my blog, Daisy Spoke. And my very first post in Daisy Spoke was “5 Things I’ve Learned About Life Through Mountain Biking”.

So ….. now here at last are another five ways that mountain biking has helped me to keep learning and growing as an individual!

1. Look up

Look upI instinctively look straight down in front of me when I ride my bike. This means I wobble a lot and react to every little lump and bump in the terrain. Having a one way staring competition with the trail right in front of me does me no favours. My imagination fixates on small details that don’t really matter. I didn’t even realise this was happening until I learnt at a coaching session the importance of looking up, to keep my eyes focused further along the track. This gets me into flow and enjoying a smoother, more connected ride. I’m still learning to trust myself, to have confidence that my brain has registered the terrain directly in front of me and that my body will know how to handle it. Every ride is a reminder to keep my sights focused ahead in all areas of my life – my work, my personal life, and my riding!

2. Absorb the bumps

Absorbing the bumps while mountain biking
Photo from Chicks in the Sticks 2017

The bumps and jumps are all part of the fun of mountain biking – in fact a very large part of it! But it’s taken me a long time to see it that way. Fear of falling and lack of confidence creates tension which in turn leads to a rigid framework, sore muscles and stiff joints at the end of a ride. Learning to relax my stance and go with the bumps instead of resisting them is an ongoing process. Mountain biking gives me the opportunity to experience a sense of lightness instead of a sense of lack of control. I can visualise my legs as natural built-in shock absorbers. With improved inner resilience, or bounce-ability, I’m also able to relax a bit more in life in general, to see past the hiccups, and rise above the challenges.

3. Move around

Move moreHaving ridden mostly on smooth paved surfaces like roads and bicycle paths for most of my life, it’s been a huge learning curve getting onto mountain bike trails. You need to move your weight around constantly adjusting for the ever-changing terrain. Forward and back, side to side, up and down, as well as every possible combination of these movements. The hard lesson is that if you don’t shift your weight around you can’t get up that hill, or down that steep slope, or round that tight corner. Riding can quickly turn into hike-a-bike (which isn’t much fun) or hitting the ground (which also isn’t much fun). So when I ride I try to be conscious of how I move my body – above and around my bike frame. As in life, the more you move around, the more fun you’ll have and the healthier you’ll be.

4. Be present in the moment

Mindful concentration while mountain biking
Photo from Chicks in the Sticks 2016

A distracted mind is on a road to mishap. At least, that’s my experience on my mountain bike and life in general. On my bike, the terrain is constantly changing and I need to keep my wits about me at all times. When I tune my sensory antennae into the environment around me, I’m fully present in the here and now. At least that’s the theory! The reality is that sometimes when I’m riding my mind wanders off and suddenly, oops, there it is, a rut the size of the Grand Canyon about to swallow me and my bike. It’s an ongoing learning process of training my brain to come back to the present, Not only does this make me safer on my bike, the ride is heaps more fun too. The same technique applied to other areas of life can lead to more satisfying relationships, more efficient and effective business decisions, and reduced anxiety.

5. Keep trying!

Patiently persist!Throughout life I’ve tended to focus my energy and attention on things that come most easily to me. If I couldn’t do something perfectly the first time, I’d usually move on to the next thing fairly quickly. As far as mountain biking goes, I’d had a few short rides on unpaved paths and paddocks over the years but didn’t develop much interest in “that kind of riding”. I’d fallen off a few times so there wasn’t a lot of incentive to keep going, so my bike tended to stay in the garage most of the time. A few years ago I decided to give it another go. Maybe there was an inner knowing that it would open up a whole new world to me, that there was much more to be gained from riding than simply mountain biking skills. With the support of my Courage Coach, I learned to develop persistence and this has had a profound impact on me. I’ve discovered how valuable persistence can be when life gets tough and I feel like giving up. Persistence speaks to that fiercely determined part of my soul and keeps me trying, practising, modifying, trying again, and finding ways to bring my hopes and dreams into reality. I’ve learned that I can work really hard at things that don’t come naturally to me and to experience immense satisfaction from that!

Read PART 1 of this article (my very first ever blog post!) “5 Things I’ve Learned About Life Through Mountain Biking” including:

  • Look where you want to go
  • Lean into what you most fear
  • Going slow is ok
  • Take a break when you need it
  • Practice, practice, practice

Discovering mountain biking as life’s ultimate parallel universe in her middle age, Daisy Spoke aka Kathryn Walton logoKathryn Walton shares information and reflections in Daisy Spoke that connect, inspire and self-empower women to make healthy choices for themselves. She integrates her love of physical exercise, family, nature, gardening and creative arts with her professional background in mental health social work to facilitate change with individuals, groups and communities of women who are committed to living life to the full.

THRIVE for Women Online Group

My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.” — Maya AngelouDaisy Spoke Banner

I’m so incredibly excited to announce that registrations are now open for my online group program THRIVE for Women! Dozens of women have participated in the face-to-face version of this group over the last 6 years and now at last I’m able to offer it online so you can participate in the comfort of your own home (or anywhere else)!

THRIVE for WomenWho is it for?

Women often have many roles to fill at work, home and in the community. Self-care often comes last on our list of things to do. Yet there are many actions we can incorporate into our day to strengthen us, help us to be more efficient and effective, enable us to think more clearly and make better choices. When we routinely use these actions, we begin to THRIVE – not just survive!

Are YOU ready to take action? To be consistent with the habits that help you to feel strong and capable? To function at your highest level? To get on top of your stresses? To achieve your goals? To develop mind and body strength? To think like a winner? If so, THRIVE for Women is for you!

What topics are covered?

After many years of working with people one-on-one, I’ve created this group program addressing the issues women often share:

  • How can I sleep better?
  • How can I maintain a routine of exercise and nutrition that I love, and that is good for my mental health?
  • How can I choose and stick to goals?
  • How can I get unstuck when things don’t go to plan?
  • How can I juggle the priorities in my life?
  • How can I best manage the stresses in my life?

THRIVE for WomenHow does THRIVE for Women work?

THRIVE for Women includes a weekly group video call on different wellness / mental health topics, handouts on everything we cover in the calls (plus more!), a private discussion page, and a BONUS one-on-one session for participants at the end of the program!

** The live group video calls will be held weekly for 6 weeks commencing Monday 23rd July 2018 from 7:30pm to 8:30pm (AEST). You’ll need a device with a web cam or inbuilt camera connected to a reliable Internet connection (eg tablet, IPAD, computer). We’ll be using a safe video conference platform called Zoom for the video meetings – it’s easy to use and all instructions will be given to you before THRIVE starts!

Why join an online group?

I’ve run face-to-face women’s groups for many years now, and they’ve been so successful that it’s time to take them online! This way you can join in from the comfort of your own home. No more child care issues. No more transport or parking hassles. No more juggling work responsibilities to get to the group.

What are the benefits for me?

There are so many benefits when you join THRIVE for Women:

  • discover the latest PROVEN strategies for MIND and BODY health
  • CONNECT with other women and learn from each other in a CONFIDENTIAL and FRIENDLY atmosphere
  • grow RESILIENCE, INNER STRENGTH, SELF-COMPASSION and WELLNESS
  • develop a range of SKILLS for living a life that THRIVES
  • explore a different topic each week through LIVE ONLINE VIDEO meetings (a recording will be available if you are not able to make it to a live session)
  • PROBLEM-SOLVE the real issues that get in the way of self-care routines
  • access INFORMATION SHEETS, CHECKLISTS and a PRIVATE DISCUSSION GROUP
  • OVER 6 HOURS of access and support in a group that would cost you hundreds of dollars one-on-one
  • guidance by an Accredited Mental Health Social Worker using EVIDENCE-BASED approaches
  • participate in a BONUS one-on-one session to really make the biggest difference in your life!

THRIVE for WomenHow much does THRIVE for Women cost?

To celebrate the launch of THRIVE for Women online, you can currently register at the SUPER-SPECIAL PRICE of $175 with the added BONUS of a one-on-one session at no extra cost. (The total value of this program is over $1000, so it really is amazing value for everyone who registers for this first launch! That’s over 7 hours of contact with an Accredited Mental Health Social Worker guiding you towards a life that THRIVES, plus all the written material and resources for future reference, plus the connections made with the other group members!)

How do I register?

Registrations are easy! Simply click here to go to the booking site where you can make a secure payment online and provide your contact details. Once registered, you’ll receive an email from me with more details about how we will connect together.

What women are saying about Kathryn’s face-to-face groups

100% of past participants have strongly agreed that the group assisted them to develop new knowledge and / or skills in managing their mental health.

The best part of the group was “…..meeting new ladies and realising I wasn’t alone in my feelings or shortcomings, but then learning there are ways I can improve my life.”

“To feel comfortable with the group in a non judgemental way. Learning new ways to think and put into practice stress management. And let go of things out of my control.”

“Realising there are other ways of thinking. There are some things you just can’t control…..no matter how much you worry about them.”


THRIVE for WomenI have some questions ……..

 

If you have any questions, simply send me a message or give me a call on 0455 992 419. As always, I’d love to hear from you!