Postcards from the Fire

Creative Arts Batemans Bay (CABBI) has launched a community healing project called Postcards from the Fire, in which anyone affected by the past summer’s bushfires can submit photos and stories. “Postcards is a virtual gallery on Instagram and Facebook of what the 2019-2020 bushfire season made of our world, as seen through the lenses of our community members,” said CABBI president Robert Creed. Read full story here.

Interviewing after natural disasters

Sometime after 10 p.m. on August 27, 2018, Judy and Richard Mixter were keeping an eye on a late summer storm that just wouldn’t let up.  The Coon Valley couple noticed some flooding in their backyard. Richard heard some water seeping into their finished basement, so he went downstairs and did what he could to keep things dry.  The Mixter’s story is part of an oral history project in southwestern Wisconsin called “Stories from the Flood,” an innovative approach to trauma spearheaded by the Driftless Writing Center of Viroqua. “From the beginning we wanted to help people heal and move forward. I think that has happened, it has happened individually and in a group setting,” said Tamera Dean, the director of “Stories from the Flood.”

Here in Australia we are no strangers to natural disasters – floods, drought, bush-fires. This story is about a community’s response to a natural disaster here. Perhaps we can learn from it.