“That was a wild experience so that’s why I got into Stand-up. You don’t have to sell yourself to do anything. It’s all on your own terms. The last show I had was here at The Metropole in February and I ended on such a high. Hopefully sometime soon I can get back into it.
I remember I woke up the morning after the flood hit. No-one could sleep that night anyway. I was looking at my phone…5… 6…7am. I saw Eli Roth’s video of him on his roof calling out for help, I saw Sally Flannery’s video of her in town above Dirty’s and she was showing how fast the water was rising every half hour. I just saw chaos and all the community pages and forums where everyone was asking what’s going on and crying out for help. People trapped in their homes and up on their roof for hours and no-one coming to rescue them. Everyone including me asking, what’s going on?
I realised, wait a second, why don’t I go down there. I went down and filmed how high the water was at every section I could get to. After that the messages were flying in with people asking, What about this street? My families in this street! I was just reading all these messages and trying to film where people’s concerns were. It wasn’t a planned thing but I went down the next day and started filming again. I did 14 days straight of videoing what was happening, so when the water started receding, I filmed where and how you get back into town.
I was just going through some of those videos this morning and it really blew up when I did this ‘call for help’ video. That’s when surfer Kelly Slater saw the video, Will Anderson the Comedian, Inspired and Unemployed Comedians in Sydney, I had all these people sharing my video of what was happening in Lismore. The media were doing what they could but it wasn’t on the ground and amongst it. I’m no reporter and I’m no journalist but I just kept going. It was a bit of a weird period there because understandably people were emotionally charged and sensitive about what was happening with all their flood damaged stuff on the streets but I had a different perspective. I needed to capture this and show Australia what the hell was going on with rubbish piled up to the roof in the main streets of the CBD. The call for help video was about 2 minutes long and it went gang busters.
After that 14 days I said that’s it, flood waters receded, time to call it quits guys and the next day Scott Morrison came to town so I thought, I better keep going. Then I met Friendly Jordies and got an interview with him. It just kept rolling. I started doing the interviews with Murray and Janelle and then for the last bit I’ve been doing one a week to show Lismore what’s happening. Here we are 6 months later and it’s time to hang the hat up. It’s been a great experience meeting all these cool people…like Murray Ings who took me around Lismore’s buildings. My mind was blown.… The architecture, the ornate ceilings and pressed metal. This town was made to flood but we’ve gotten so complacent over the years with cheap building materials. I’m loving how it’s all being stripped back and people using flood resilient materials. Look at Dark Horse cafe…perfect! There are silver linings that come from this flood and we need to revitalise our unhealthy rivers.
I just want to see Lismore come back thriving. This has made us stronger again. We’re a bunch of tough buggers here and I know nothings going to stop us. It was reaching such a pinnacle. Downtown was so busy and thriving and then Bang! No matter where I end up over the years Lismore will always be in my heart and I’ll always consider this home.”