The day the fires hit I wasn't here. Packed up and left on the
Monday afternoon and the fires hit on a Tuesday. I got a
message on my phone for residents of Ewingar to seek
shelter.
I tried to contact people, neighbours and couldn't get
through and didn't find out till about 8.30 that night that
everything was gone.
For me it was like losing your loved one, losing the partner,
sort of thing, you know, you sort of go away for a few days
for work, and then come back and everything's gone and just
burned charred remains everywhere.
It was just like looking at an apocalypse.
When it happened, I hit rock bottom. And there's only two
ways you can sort of go when you hit that far down, you know. You
can go six foot under, or you can come back up again. So you
just sort of try and get back on top of things and make do.
I was inspired by the Chandelier of Lost and Broken, which was
done down at Nymboida.
And then I pulled together a series of creative arts recovery
workshops for Ewingar.
But I wasn't sure if the men would come.
And so I rang Steve Carrigg from Rural Adversity Mental Health
Programme and told him, you know what I was on about. And he said
to me - 'There's this guy, John Schumann, I know.'
We rolled out a whiteboard and got some whiteboard markers,
some cups of tea and away we went.
I just got them to throw up their their experiences, their
reflections, their thoughts, and we wacked them up on the
whiteboard, and then played with them a bit and moved it around
and ended up with what I think is a halfway reasonable song
Long Gully Road.
Singing: Morning light filtered through, haze of smoke and ash.
Could hear the country crying, you can hear the gum trees
crash.
Birds have fallen silent, and the land is bleak and still.
From Ewingar to Bulldog rock, from the Clarence to the hills.
Talking about what happened without realising you're talking
about what happened.
There was around 15 othe blokes there. Getting a personal
perspective of what other people went through.
You get to a point where you think my day must have been
worse than anybody else's.
Until you hear somebody's view of what they went through.
And you think, nah, my day was fine.
I think there was a couple of fellows in that group who
probably didn't even recognise that they could benefit from
having a chat with someone.
And they thought that maybe the help wasn't available, or that
they didn't need help.
But by the end of the weekend, you know, they've reached out
and actually sat down and had a bit of a yarn and explored their
emotions, which are associated with that bushfire.
And I think that's a very useful and therapeutic way of dealing
with the trauma of going through something that many of those
fellas considered was life threatening.
That was a life changing event for me.
Like punching a hole and a plasterboard wall and (it)
opened something for me to release a lot of the built up
disappointment, anguish and sadness.
There were some tears and some shaky voices and some hard
swallowing as we recalled what went on and constructed it into
a song.
Singing - There was nowhere we could run to.
There was nowhere we could go.
We were calling EVARD432 from Long Gully Road.
I truly believe that this song will move the whole nation.
I would challenge anyone to find a quiet moment, put your
headphones on, turn the volume up and listen, truly actively
listened, to this song and not be moved by it.
I've been saying to a lot of my colleagues and friends and
family that what I observed out there on that weekend in Ewingar
was probably one of the most effective recovery things I've
ever seen in my career.
The thing that frustrates me sometimes is that you know the
powers that be the bureaucrats, the politicians, the
departmental heads, you know, they talk a lot about bushfire
recovery, but they don't actually think about how
important the creative artistic process can be in that recovery.
That's disappointing.
It's always been disappointing for me.
And I'm hoping that this time, those blokes, what those blokes
from Ewingar produced will demonstrate to the rest of
Australia that creative recovery, creative-led recovery,
is as valid as having a talk in a darkened room to a
psychologist or a psychiatrist or a counsellor.
I think that having a pilot project that can be rolled out -
this has proven that it benefits people in their healing process.
And if people don't have to go asking for this and asking for
funds for it, if it's something that can be offered.
I would like to think that people will listen to 'Long
Gully Road' and, like they did when they heard 'I was only 19'
for the first time, get some idea of what it was like to be
those people at that time in that place.
Singing - And the country moves from black to green, rocky river
flows.
I'm driving through the healing, down Long Gully Road.
It's been two years since our community was hit by the Long
Gully fire, and all around us, it's lile the bush is
articulating that slow process of recovery.
We've got lots of black and we've got lots of green.
And that's what we've seen happen over those two years.