Golden Carmichael’s quirky artworks were featured in WOOEE’s River of Art’s shop front exhibition on Moruya’s main street in Spring 2020, just six months after the ‘forever fires’ were finally declared out. They are creative meditations on nature and ‘natural order’ that make you think again …

They were apt contemplations as community and Country emerged out Black Summer; heeding nature’s cries for help, taking stock, and reframing all that had been lost or taken for granted.

It was a time when discombobulated thoughts and feelings had some space to bubble to the surface in those first raw months – of emergence and broken order and reckoning.

The offbeat whimsy in Golden’s works was vibrant and eye-grabbing, no pun intended! And it spoke to the times. Just what WOOEE was looking for.

Mother Nature had taken a big hit, and taken-for-granted natural rhythms of order: fire behaviour, ocean and air temperatures, and even the wisdom of evacuating to beaches, had been turned upside down. And inside out!

So, it felt right that WOOEE invite members of community to collectively share their stories, artworks, and creativity in a community art context, and to respond to the most catacylismic of summers, in our display on Moruya’s main street.

The town centre of Moruya though threatened from the north, south and west, had somehow remained untouched during Black Summer’s onslaughts.

VIDEO: Township of Moruya threatened by two fires pushing from different directions

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-04/township-of-moruya-threatened-by-two-fires/11841046

[ No audio: 36 sec duration]

Moruya Show Grounds provided a place for southern Eurobodalla locals to evacuate to during ongoing emergency warnings. And over three long months of fire fronts referred to locally as the ‘forever fires,’ and a term first coined by Fire historian Stephen J. Pyne.

Locals – and in fact whole groups of families who had lost homes – set up tents and caravans on the Show Ground oval. Private and public spaces collapsed.

The mantra on greeting friends once more at the evacuation centres, became a tentative ‘how did you do?’

Saying goodbye always seem to include a customary sign off – ‘stay safe!’

Moruya Evacuation Centre January 2020

The grounds of Moruya Golf Club nearby, were seen with different eyes too. Once a site for sport and a leisure retreat from life’s everyday cares, the golf course morphed overnight into a critical emergency oasis. It became a refuge of safety, providing (we hoped) a crucial life-protecting buffer should it be needed.

Video Trigger Alert – scenes & sounds of helicopters, fire conditions, and walking through burnt out property.

So when River of Art shook itself off and rose up like a cultural phoenix , returning Art on Parade 2020 to Moruya’s Vulcan street, six months after those long prayed for rains had finally extinguished the last fire, WOOEE was lucky to receive an offer from the owners of The Pantry to hang some art works and display a slideshow in the shop’s windows. Jan, Elisa and Nic’s support for community, and their patience through WOOEE’s install and bump out were really appreciated.

River of Artm September 2020: our first spring after Black Summer

While hanging Golden’s works in the windows, with others attached as window decals, we overheard numerous enquiries from customers asking for honey. There was none! That was of course not just a local issue, but a concern for beekeepers and agriculturalists across states.

Questions about honey, heard over the counter, across barrels of carefully sourced provisions and whole foods, revealed that nature’s order had been placed under yet another stress.

WOOEE

Vital to the health of people and our planet, bees safeguard world food security. They increase the variety of foods we have to eat and sell. Vegetables, fruit and nuts – and the Australian bush – rely heavily upon the not so humble bee. As the super pollinators of the planet, bees are pivotal to our ecosystems and biodiversity.

When bees thrive, crops and plants thrive. When bees thrive we thrive! Bees are, in short, vital for our lives.

Small inverterbrates, bees are huge signifiers of the link between the health of our climate and our existence.

‘ As the pre-eminent pollinator in Australia, honey bees need access to the floral diversity found in
healthy forests to stay healthy themselves. Any limitation on or disturbance to honey bees’ access to
floral resources has a negative impact on not only local honey production but the ability of honey bees
to provide pollination services to Australian broadacre crops and horticulture.
Industry experts suggest honey production across Australia is down 50% since the 2019-20 bushfires
with a significant proportion of hives lost across New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and
Victoria. ‘

Report July 2020
AgriFutures Australia No 20-057
AgriFutures Australia Project No PRJ-012495

https://www.agrifutures.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/20-057_digital.pdf

Whilst feeling mixtures of loss, grief, solastalgia, relief, trauma, and ‘survivor guilt’ after the fires – as well as seeking ways to soften our memories – there was also a sense of apprehension about all that we had witnessed being quickly forgotten. The international media’s spotlight had shifted to a new disaster – a global pandemic.

Green shoots appeared. Epicormic growth on burnt trees heralded hope as well as ‘wait and see.’ The tree ferns on the Clyde Mountain greeted tourists and travellers with their spectacular flourishes. And a surreal, green re-emergence invited hope alongside caution.

Whilst the preceding spring had heralded the anonomolous early arrival of the 2019 Fire Season, Spring 2020 was filled with looking for the familiar. And being forced to confront the changes shaking our sense of home and the rupturing ofseasonal rhythms we had taken for granted.

Losing more homes than any other local government area in Australia, over 500 homes were lost, and over 270 damaged. Sadly, four lives were lost in Eurobodalla. 81% of the shire had been burnt. NSW lost eleven more homes in Black Summer than in any other fire season. The wait for home rebuilds would stretch out and lengthen. And continues to this day with people still left couch surfing, living in tents, temporary caravans and pods.

Solastalgia, simply put, is “the homesickness you have when you are still at home”.

https://theconversation.com/the-age-of-solastalgia-8337

Socially, Autumn and Spring 2020 was a window in time when local community were able to re-unite once again. A moment for briefly sharing more of our personal stories and reflections, in physical public spaces.

We would also hear that word ‘recovery’ – so popular in official service parlance – again and again. Emotions would hit harder some time out from the fires, according to reports by local GPs.

In the makeshift pop-up gallery windows on Vulcan street, and in our conversations about the shire, we could feel a sense of community coming back together again.

Though soon cut short by our first Covid-19 lockdown, the start of some re-emergence into a changed world had begun.

Social distancing and lock downs delayed this face-to-face process, but a quest for reconnecting had definitely begun.

Soon with Covid, those of us with internet access would seek social connection and a sense of the local, online, connected via our screens. Spending time in unburnt nature, would became even more precious. Every sign of nature’s beauty, a jewel to hold close.

See more about WOOEE ROA 2020 https://withourowneyeseurobodalla.org/river-of-art-2020/

Summer of Crisis

Further Reading –

Why bees are critical for achieving sustainable development

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13280-020-01333-9 Published: 20 April 2020

https://www.beeculture.com/out-of-the-past/

Night Garden, Trevor Hyde, Oil on canvas

Remembering Trees no 7, Trevor Hyde

Oil on canvas

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