After a long wait, designing and planning behind the scenes, I am now finalising logistics and travel plans to visit four separate communities during the coming 4-6 months. I will spend most of March in the Lockyer Valley (Qld), most of April in Dunalley (Tas), and then parts of May and June in Coonabarabran (NSW) […]
I am beginning to design the fieldwork component of my research. I have visited the Lockyer Valley in Queensland, and now the Tasman Peninsula in Tasmania. Both areas devastated by disasters, both with communities trying to recover, rebuild, re-establish themselves. Interestingly both communities have established Facebook pages as part of their recovery processes.
Every now and then I feel swamped by the literature that must be read and analysed for this research to be credible. I begin to feel overwhelmed by the task of sorting through it all and making sense of what has been written about natural disaster over many decades and by many researchers.
Then I find […]
What a title (‘Stitch and Bitch’) and what a fabulous group of women these women from are – the Material Girls of Kancoona – something that women all over Australia can do and enjoy, to support one another. Watch this video and enjoy the support these women give to one […]
Petrea King (Quest for Life) talks with the Queensland Rural Women’s Network about trauma, loss and grief. She provides practical guidance about how these affect children, adults and communities and what we can do to ease the pain and difficulty, for ourselves and others. This information takes the form of video discussion and interview. These […]
It was important for me to attend the ceremony today to mark the 10 year anniversary of the Canberra Bushfires. This was an important marker in time for many of us – ‘before’ the fires and ‘after’ the fires. Like others present I remember the day clearly and have my own story of fear, action, […]
Sometimes children and others find comics a useful way to understand or come to terms with a recent disaster like a fire. The oatmeal.com/comics provides a short comic strip about a boy and one of the family cats – particularly when the family’s house burns down. This might be useful as a […]
Having spent the past couple of days at the South Coast of NSW on annual holiday, I am only too aware of the fires burning around this state and Tasmania. I’m sure there are others as well. My gratitude and admiration go out to the Fire Fighters and the Emergency Services personnel who are trying […]
As Christmas approaches I am realising that I’ve been reading, listening to others, and learning about disaster recovery and community resilience for 9 months now. The more reports and documents that I read, the more people in local government, in the emergency services and in the non-goverment sector that I meet, the more impressed I […]
Some more information has been added to tools, links and resources – continuing the process of learning about what resilient communities are doing for themselves in recovery.