Resilient Clarence digital map now live

The devastating 2019-20 bushfire season was the worst in recorded history for New South Wales.

The Clarence Valley was one of the hardest hit areas, with 168 homes destroyed, and many more homes and properties damaged.

Stories of the bushfires were collected from residents of the ten fireaffected communities of Glenreagh, Ewingar, Nymboida, Dundurrabin, Baryulgil, Malabugilmah, Woombah, Iluka, Ashby and Wooloweyah.

OSCAR Wilde once chimed, “Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.” Which could well have been penned on the birth certificate of Algerian-born Albert Camus, the second youngest ever winner (at 44 years of age) of a Nobel Prize in Literature. And luckily for us, because within 3-years of receiving this accolade he died in a car accident on a quiet back road in rural France.

As such, I often ponder what the next 30 years of a life actually lived might have brought about for such a prodigious man of letters. He being the second child of a wineshipping clerk father who died of shrapnel wounds in WWI (when Albert was only 4-years old) and an illiterate house-keeper, partially deaf mother with a speech impediment. Of which there is something so tragically and yet brilliantly sublime about the life and legacy of literature’s most celebrated ‘outsider’. It was amazing that he came to the fore by way of a childhood spent in a 3-room apartment that belonged to his grandmother with no running water, no electricity and no bathroom in a poor suburb of Algiers.

As a result, such an upbringing typically lends itself to being lost or at least lured into the non-achieving despairs and descending lows of frustration. And yet what it gave rise to for Camus, was a voice that still reverberates above rooftops to point a way to a promised land, if not a better world where we all get the chance to reside within distinct reach of our hopes and dreams.

Earning his stripes in the most confronting and challenging way, not just as a journalist and celebrated writer, but as a human being amidst the threatening mayhem that was occupied France during WWII.

A one-time soccer goalie ace for his university team, the 1957 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature – Albert Camus, seems to ever stand guard in defending the revered grounds of human decency against the forces of tyranny that dazzle and impress no one but the dim of mind and the shallow of heart. That no book has been more read in French (the very language that best represents much that is praiseworthy and worth celebrating in art) over the last 100-years than Albert Camus’ The Outsider, is an outright testament to the lasting value and standing of this playwright-apostle of ‘considered’ revolt, and the movement that came to be known as The Absurd.

In the case of his brief life, Albert Camus took literature on a magic carpet ride revealing sights, insights and dazzling flights of fancy the likes no-one had ever dared, albeit cared deeply enough to do in such a way – before or since. Or as he once said, “To save what can still be saved just to make the future possible: that is the great motivating force, the reason for passion and sacrifice.”

These personal accounts of loss and survival, strength and resilience have been collated into an interactive digital map of the region. The Resilient Clarence Digital Map can be viewed on the surface table at the Grafton Library or on the Resilient Clarence page of the Clarence Valley Council website: • https://www. clarence.nsw.gov.au/ Projects/Resilient-

Clarence

Often, stories are very difficult to share, and it can be difficult to speak on camera. So a creative art activity focusing on emotional healing and recovery was created.

The original artwork travelled to each of the bushfire-affected communities and is a collaboration with more than 100 contributors.

The artwork supported community connection events where people could come together to have a hand in creating the imagery, and to share their stories.

Contributions from every community is represented in this artwork.

“Even in a great disaster, beautiful things can evolve”

- Jen, Ewingar

This artwork is currently on display downstairs at Grafton converted into a digital form for the interactive map online. It was facilitated by Kerry Speirs and led by the creative directors engaged to deliver the digital map, Blanc Space Agency.

The extensive series the Resilient Clarence Digital Map has established a valuable resource other people can learn from into the future.

“It has taken an extraordinary amount of courage for many to share the manifestations of their most harrowing times,” Creative Director Hayley Talbot said.

“This project will save lives because of the shared knowledge we have gained.

Library, and has been of videos contained in

“Stories are what bind us, teach us and enlighten us, and they are what remains when everything is gone. They live in hearts and minds and can never be taken from us.”