Living Memory
Stories and portraits celebrating North Lismore
Many residential properties in North Lismore are part of the buyback stream of the Resilient Homes Program, the largest residential buyback program in Australian history. As the suburb transitions from a vibrant neighbourhood to a new future, many local stories, it’s history and the deep understanding of place will move with the residents.
Living Memory is a community project exploring the stories, history and memories of North Lismore. At the heart of this work is the desire to creatively support a community experiencing a massive transformation — to tell their stories in their own words.
With North Lismore residents, we will create a series of reflections and portraits, and a collection of historical materials and artefacts, celebrating the people and a suburb now rapidly changing.
How will these stories and portraits be captured?
Tell your story pop-up photobooth
North Lismore’s community is invited to be centre-stage. Photographic artist Cherine Fahd believes photography can bring people and communities together, and creatively address moments of significant social change. Her photobooth will be set up in front of the old General Store on Bridge Street and Living Lab Northern Rivers invites locals to come along and have your portrait captured by local photographer Elise Derwin — by yourself or with everyone in your family, local club, group or street!
On the day share the experience of group portraiture with others, bring memorabilia and personal stories, and help us to create some lasting memories of the neighbourhood you are part of.
Oral history interviews
A series of oral histories with North Lismore residents will be created as part of Living Memory. The collection of stories will explore the theme of home, community and locality in the words of locals from the areas where homes are being bought back.
How you can get involved
Oral history interviews
As part of Living Memory, we will be interviewing a group of North Lismore residents, to create a series of oral stories. The collection of stories will explore the theme of home, community and locality in the words of locals from the areas where homes are being bought back. Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch with Living Lab Northern Rivers at livinglabnr@scu.edu.au.
Where will these stories be shared?
Digital archive
Living Memory will showcase the final series of oral histories and portraits, as well as a collection of historical materials and artefacts, ensuring they are accessible for long-term future reference. Together they will form a record of a North Lismore, it’s place and people, at a particular time.
A journey through North Lismore
“I love it where Leycester Creek and Wilsons River meet. It’s like the waters are kissing. When there’s a flood, it’s really passionate - calm down, guys, calm down!”
Artist, curator and educator Claudie Frock reflects on a life well lived in the town hugged by Leycester Creek and the Wilsons River.
Co-design workshop
In October 2024, current and recent residents of North Lismore came together to learn more about this project and share their local knowledge to enable it to be designed with the interests of locals in mind.
Participants shared that North Lismore has always been – and remains – a vibrant and resilient community, defined by its diversity, deep bonds, and working class pride. It’s a place rich in social and cultural connections, where people feel rooted in nature and close to one another. They described how the area has been shaped by the Sleeping Goanna, unique geography, wetlands, a strong connection to Country, as well as class, religion, culture, and the familiarity of generations of families and neighbors close to town.
These themes have inspired the team to delve deeper, guided by the stories and insights shared by the community. North of Leycester Creek, the local identity remains unshakable. “Once a Northie, always a Northie,” they said.
The range and depth of the stories shared encouraged the team to expand the project. In addition to longer oral history interviews, the project now includes shorter stories in written or audio form. Posters, menus, and other memorabilia are also being collected, inspired by memories of live gigs, cafes, and local haunts.
Thanks to community leads, valuable resources like Anne Thacker’s Branches of the Cedar Tree, which captures the Lebanese history in North Lismore, have been brought to light. Many community members have asked for more on the early history of North Lismore, and the team is uncovering a wealth of information to enrich the collection.
Photos by Elise Derwin.
Tell your story pop up photobooth
In November 2024, North Lismore’s community was invited to be centre stage. Current and recent residents of North Lismore brought themselves, their families, friends, housemates and pets to Galaxy Underground and the old general store in Bridge St, North Lismore to share the experience of group portraiture with others. They shared memorabilia and personal stories and created lasting memories that have been recorded as part of this project.
Below are photographs captured at the pop up photobooth.
Photos by Kate Holmes.
Project collaborators
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Cherine Fahd
Cherine is one of Australia's leading photographic artists. For over twenty years, she has exhibited, written and curated works that focus on photography and video performance. Her projects often incorporate members of the public, her immediate family, friends and the artistic community.
Cherine is interested in how photography brings people together and how we use photography to perform, connect and tell stories.
Her work has been commissioned by major cultural institutions in Australia, including the Sydney Opera House, Carriageworks, Performance Space and the Art Gallery of New South Wales. She holds a PhD from Monash University Melbourne and is an Associate Professor at the University of Technology Sydney.
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Elise Derwin
Elise is an award-winning photographer based on Bundjalung Country in Lismore, NSW, who specialises in documentary and editorial photography.
She has a Bachelor of Design (Photomedia) from Western Sydney University and has extensive experience as a photojournalist. Her images have featured in the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Guardian, The Australian, The Telegraph, Herald Sun and The NT News. She has also worked extensively across Australia, particularly in the Northern Territory, and has undertaken several overseas assignments, including to the United States, East Timor and Indonesia.
Fuelled by a genuine connection to the people and places she’s photographing, Elise aims to capture not just moments, but whole stories. She enjoys getting to know the people she’s photographing to tell important and often personal stories, and the resulting images are rich with humanity and compassion.
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Jeanti St Clair
Jeanti St Clair (she/her/hers) tells stories through audio, both as documentaries and audio walks. Jeanti lives in the Northern Rivers of New South Wales and has been a lecturer at Southern Cross University in Lismore since 2009, where she has taught media and journalism.
Several of her recent audio projects have documented the impact of the flood on residents of the Northern Rivers. These include Lismore Flood Stories, a suite of audio walks about the 2017 Lismore flood, Rescue: Stories and portraits of civilian rescuers from the February 2022 flood in collaboration with photographer Raimond de Weerdt, and Dear River, a listening experience that invited Northern Rivers people to contemplate their relationship to the river after the 2022 floods, in collaboration with Rose Turtle Ertler, and based on Rose’s Dear Tree project. Each project takes a creative recovery approach to story-sharing and are intended as healing journeys for our Northern Rivers communities.
Jeanti is a PhD candidate at the University of Wollongong and is also an associate producer with Soundtrails, where she has produced the Nimbin Soundtrail, about the impact of the 1973 Aquarius Festival on Nimbin, and is currently developing a First Nations-led audio walk in Ballina for Ballina Shire Council.
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Adele Wessell
Adele has been living in the Northern Rivers for 30 years and teaching history at Southern Cross University over that time. She is a founding member of Richmond Riverkeeper and currently working on a history of the Richmond River. Adele is a member of Richmond River Historical Society and has completed a number of projects on local history, including the development of the Richmond River Open Access Repository.
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Jo Kijas
Jo has been conducting oral history interviews for over 30 years. She is a consultant historian and adjunct fellow at SCU where she established the history major in 1995. Her PhD from UTS was a history of contested places in northern NSW.
Since 2002 Jo has built her consultancy business, Kijas Histories, which includes the publication of nine commissioned histories with five NSW National Trust and Museums & Galleries awards. Jointly authored, her most recent publication (2024) is Places that Inspire: Far North Coast Histories of Remnant Forest, Swamp and Heath.