Making the Clarence More Resilient

More than half a million hectares – 59 per cent of the Clarence Valley - was burnt by catastrophic and unprecedented bushfires between July 2019 and January 2020.

The fires directly impacted 1500 rural residents. Following the fires, community feedback identified a priority for better understanding the stages of recovery for wellbeing, reconnecting with nature and future fire preparedness. From this, the Resilient Clarence Project was created to work with the most severely impacted communities of Ashby, Baryulgil, Dundurrabin, Ewingar, Glenreagh, Iluka, Malabugilmah, Nymboida, Wooloweyah and Woombah, in partnership with agencies to enable better delivery of programs in target communities. Red Cross was engaged to empower rural communities to better prepare for future disasters through the Red Cross’ award-winning Community Resilience Teams model. Communities have been supported to build the skills, knowledge, resources, and connections that they need to successfully navigate through all stages of the disaster cycle: before, during and after an event. St Vincent’s de Paul, Vinnies as they are affectionally known, have been supporting and training residents in Dundurrabin, Nymboida and Ewingar. They have facilitated a range of practical TAFE courses for community members including Chainsaw Cut and Trim courses for Women, Tree Felling, Chemical Handling and a few special requests such as Farm Fencing and Safe Food Handling. Resilient Clarence is working with Envite and Clarence Landcare to help bushfire affected communities reconnect with nature and heal the scars the fires etched into the landscape. Envite has worked in Malabugilmah to deliver an Aboriginal Leadership Bush Regeneration Program and with Yaegl youth to connect and Heal Country at a walk and talk on cool burning. Landcare has run a range of school programs and they have also run an Environmental DNA program to determine what animals are present in the environment post fire with eDNA samples being collected from Nymboida and Dundurrabin. The results of the program were made public at the Monitoring Environmental Change workshops in September. Another highlight of the Landcare program was the Canine for Wildlife workshop held in Ashby. Max, a wildlife detection dog demonstrated just how easy it is for him to locate koalas much to the delight of workshop participants. Our partnership with Blanc Space is collecting fire stories from across the Clarence Valley. Stories which will sit on a digital map and be available for everyone. The Resilient Clarence illustration pictured above, shows what harvesting stories looks like and was created at one of our community leader workshops. The most important goal of Resilient Clarence has been to connect communities and ensure community members are prepared for disasters, no matter what they look like. Bringing activities out to the communities are connecting people and helping them to create Preparedness Plans.

If you would like to know more and keep up to date with the Resilient Clarence Project and the stories from the fire affected communities please sign up to our newsletter www.clarence.nsw.gov.au/ ResilienceNews

Image above (L-R): Community members gather at Maclean showground to say thank you to emergency service agencies.