STORYBOARD, an interactive website, is a Regional Arts Victoria project created in partnership with the Victorian Country Fire Authority (CFA) and the Department of Sustainability (DSE).

Four months after the 2009 Victorian bushfires many people are only now coming to terms with their loss and are yet to share their story. Regional Arts Victoria, the CFA and the DSE have created a website that provides a space for affected communities to heal through the sharing of stories. Storyboard facilitates storytelling through a variety of creative mediums including video, text and image.  A resource for everyone, the Storyboard captures the myriad creative responses to the bushfires not only from artists but all those affected by fire. The uploaded stories and media are presented in the form of an interactive map of Victoria which can be viewed spatially as well as chronologically.

“Sharing stories has the power to engage people, assist communities to collectively deal with trauma and create stronger networks so that they are self-determining, aware and resilient.” said Director of RAV, Lindy Allen.

CFA and DSE research indicates that the traumatic effects of major fire events are not adequately dealt with and those affected may carry unresolved emotions within them for many years. They recognise that the informal sharing of stories is a critical first step in enabling healing to begin and minimising the ongoing psychological damage that individuals bear.  “By participating in STORYBOARD the fire services will have the opportunity to learn more about the communities they serve and support parts of the community who perhaps would otherwise not engage with bushfire risk issues.” – DSE spokesperson Thomas Lowe said.

Utilising social networking and media technologies such as blogs, the website also facilitates the creation of an on-line community where those dispersed by the fires can retain a sense of connectedness to their region as well as share important resources and information.

For further information please contact Georgie Sedgwick on 03 9644 1800 or 0403 932 598. High-res images are available. A number of artists directly impacted by the fires who have uploaded content to the Storyboard site are available for interview, see their stories below.

David Casey – artist – Marysville
Artist and self-confessed blow-in, David Casey has only been living in Marysville since April 2008. During that short time he photographed practically every inch of the town, capturing it in all its beauty. David lost his home on Black Saturday, fleeing to Alexandra with only his dog and his computer’s hard drive containing his entire photographic portfolio. He remembers with some irony locking his doors as he left not having any idea of the destruction that was about to be unleashed. “It was only in the aftermath of the fires that I realised just how important an archive it was that I had created”, David recalls.

The images were compiled into a publication entitled Marysville: In Loving Memory and have been distributed for free to all Marysville residents. Since the fires, David has returned to Marysville to rephotograph locations around the town and he will continue to do so as the landscape slowly changes, as homes are bulldozed then rebuilt, as blackened landscapes return to green. The collated images will form a much larger book commemorating the town’s past and documenting its present. “There’s art out there and I hope my images will help people to see the beauty amongst the ruin”, says David. David’s work is an extraordinary gift o his fellow Marysville residents and to all those who remember it fondly.

Bruno Torf – artist – Marysville
A famous tourist attraction, Bruno Torf’s Sculpture Garden along with his home were destroyed in the Marysville fires. Thankfully, Bruno and his family are all safe and just over half of the terracotta sculptures survived the blaze or have a chance of being repaired. On the afternoon of the fires, as the flames drew closer to his home, Bruno remembers fumbling around in the dark trying to open the door of his kiln where he stored some of his paintings. Somehow he managed to find the keyhole and retrieve some of them,throwing
them in the backseat of his car and heading to the shelter of a football field near his home.

On his way he saw a large black dog on the side of the road and he pulled over to let it in to the car. The dog was in such a state of panic that it stomped around in the back seat crushing the frames of Bruno’s few remaining paintings. After what seemed like an eternity he fire passed and Bruno looked in the backseat for the dog only to hear a lady in the next car cry “there’s a black dog in my car!” “Apparently the dog had moved on to a more comfortable car”, remembers Bruno with a chuckle. Fortunately, Bruno was able to salvage the paintings from their crushed frames and also retain his sense of humour in spite of all he went through.

It is this positive outlook that has helped Bruno begin rebuilding his sculpture garden with the help of his family, staff and an army of volunteers. "We want to restore the garden as quickly as possible. If we can bring people back to Marysville soon, this will bring much needed hope to the community. It is going to be a difficult and challenging time, but everyone from the town I have spoken to has a lot of optimism despite losing so much. We will recover", said Bruno.

Despite the obvious personal impact Bruno is able to see beauty amongst the destruction. Seeing the sculptures emerging so prominently out of the black, once lush landscape only seems to highlight their character, beauty and incredible detail. They seem to say “if we can still stand bravely amongst all this, so can you.”

Owen Gooding – artist - Senior Policy Officer - Fire Ecology, DSE

As a painter and photographer Owen Gooding has long been fascinated with pattern and rhythm in the natural environment. This sense response has been paralleled by a professional and personal inquiry into ecology. “I now understand that fire is a major shaper of plant forms and a pattern maker in the landscape”, said Owen.

Owen’s career has provided him with the opportunity to explore in depth the relationship between people, bushfire and the landscape. Through his work with the CFA Community Safety team he has been involved in bush fire safety regulation, community education, and post bushfire incident analysis. Most recently he assisted with the Task Force set up by the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre to assess house losses in the tragic February 2009 fires.

Currently on secondment to another fire management agency, DSE, Owen’s role is to provide support to the planners, scientists and educators involved in fire ecology. He enjoys working with these specialists to apply science in a practical way for the community.
Owen reflects, “For me science and art are both expressions of people who are seeking meaning. Art making and sharing stories is a part of the continuum of ways in which a community reconciles itself with bushfire. I create art to show the patterns and cycles of bushfire - a fire ecology.”

Camilla Tadich – artist – St Andrews

On the Saturday morning of February 7 Camilla Tadich was at her partner’s home packing for an Australia Council for the Arts funded research trip to Kalgoorlie. Although they had a fireplan, there hadn’t been a fire in St Andrews in her lifetime so she never really imagined it would reach her. She saw some smoke over the hills and her partner drove down the road to take a closer look, saying as he left “I bet you it’s nothing”. A minute later he came charging back down the road tooting his horn. Camilla and her partner’s family went straight into action managing spot fires on the property. It started becoming difficult to breathe; the buckets used to douse the flames were melting in their hands as were the rungs on their steel ladder and eventually even the masks on their faces. It was at this point that they ran out of water and had nothing left to protect their home or themselves.

They moved inside and stood in the thick smoke unable to see each other, waiting for the house to explode. All six fire alarms were set off, sending a piercing wail through their ears. Eventually her partner’s mother smashed the smoke alarms down with a broom and threw them in the bathtub. Surprised by how calm she felt through all this Camilla recalls saying to herself over and over again “Ok, this is it.”

And then the fire passed. Moving outside to assess the damage, they saw that the back sheds and her partner’s bungalow were on fire and so spent the next few hours using water from the fishpond to put them out. Inside the shed were a number of antique automobiles that had been collected over the past fifteen years, some of which were very rare and can never be replaced. The heat was so intense that the headlights on the cars melted and the steel frames bent and collapsed.

They found out later from their neighbour that they could see their sheds burning and could hear them yelling out instructions to each other as flames twice the size of the house engulfed the property. “How we survived fighting within that may have been luck, but it may have also been that we worked extremely hard to fight the fire and maintained our sanity through the whole ordeal that saved us”, reflects Camilla.