“I spent a lot of time down at Simes Bridge at the river hanging out and running amok all over North Lismore. At some point Mum thought intervention was required so I tried staying with her best friend in Melbourne. That was great but it was probably not a good idea to take a rebel out of North Lismore and dropping them into a school in North Carlton.
I ended up through my own choice going to Boarding school. It was Kooralbyn International School which was just over the border in Beaudesert. I went to a school where the whole world was in the school. Speaking English was a rule. English speakers were outnumbered by other languages. Lots of kids were from PNG. I went to school with Cathy Freeman. Running with Cathy was something else (laughs). Bouganville blew up and kids were losing parents, Tiananmen Square happened while we were at that school….Untold grief.
I finished boarding school and wanted to go home. I got into the Art degree at SCU on interview and I was in New Zealand on an exchange. I wanted to do Science though so I ended up enrolling in the degree and never left really. I ended up teaching in that degree and was in that faculty for 20 years.
I had 2 beautiful kids, Max and Zoe and Landcare was my life. I remember looking down at this poor grassy river bank from my flat and thinking I can’t live here and look at that. There was a handover in the early 90’s of the Landcare Group and 3 of us women took it on.
Lismore in the 90’s was going off. The boys from Grinspoon lived 2 doors down. There were bands in every pub, 3 nightclubs, it was amazing. There were parties in every house. The Uni was buzzing and it was pre pokies. I was the only one that had a computer so you had to go to the Library. We were handwriting our assignments. Along with the computers, Lismore changed because slowly people didn’t need to come to campus.
I did my PhD and it went for about 7 years. I didn’t want my children to say Mum didn’t finish this because of us so that was the thing that got me over the line. It also meant that I could teach at the Uni and work casually as a young mum. It was beautiful, I got to design week long field trips through all the protected areas of the North Coast. My colleague David Lloyd and I even won a National teaching award.
We were planting trees the whole time. My friends and I planted while bringing up our kids and got better and better at it. We were planting pre Levee. We started planting in ’93 which are the trees you see now along the river. Mark Dunphy of Firewheel Nursery have just hit their 5 million trees which have gone out across the North Coast. We have planted approximately 2,000 plants very year since 1993. The Duckpond is amazing what they are doing over there now. Lismore is a hotbed of Landcare at the moment.
We have not been good custodians of our beautiful Bundjalung area. My father knew that as an immigrant. How did that develop in him so fast? We are more than healing the river bank, we are healing ourselves. We come together and do this together. It’s the community that’s going to get things done. That’s what Lismore and all the floods have taught me. We were much better as a well oiled flood machine pre levee in my view. We’ve lost our way. Do we pack up? We can’t get back to pack up. There were never those questions growing up here. We all just went and packed up. They were hosing those buildings down as the flood water receded. There was none of this sitting around waiting for pumps to arrive from Sydney to get the water out of the CBD.
After the last flood a bunch of us formed the Richmond River Keeper. The river has been my safe place my whole life. If the river is unhealthy, our community is unhealthy. These rivers connect as all. We need to keep having these conversations.
Lismore is so special. I’m currently living in Melbourne and Lismore and it’s harder than I thought it would be. That perspective just shows me how big the heart is here and how amazing this community is. The water that connects us all…Casino, Coraki, Kyogle, Wilsons Creek, Whian Whian, Nimbin, The Channon, Wardell, Woodburn, Ballina. I really respect people’s experiences and what they’ve gone through. We just need to listen.”
