When Cyclone Debbie flooded Lismore in 2017, Chris Regan was stuck out of town, working at Blues Fest. He couldn’t get back in for three days and was shocked when saw his flooded house in South Lismore.

“Everything was brown – all the furniture, everything,” he said. “The flood picked up heavy cedar sofa beds and threw them around and my water tank was in the neighbour’s yard.

“I was devastated. But friends helped me clean up and I started again - living with an esky and a gas cooker for the next three months.”

Read more local news: Fundies Wholefood Market to close for renovations

Raincoat

Chris’ story is one of ten from the 2017 floods which devastated Lismore. It’s part of a new Flood Stories project, based out of a shipping container now installed in Lismore’s Quad – and the community is invited to come and experience the stories in a most unusual way.

To experience the stories, you put on a yellow raincoat and a pair of gumboots. Then, with your MP3 player, headphones and map in hand, you are guided to take a walk to a part of Lismore that the story takes place in.

Jyllie Jackson, Jeanti St Clair and Chris Regan.

Goosebumps

The stories have been recorded by SCU lecturer and audio story-teller Jeanti St Clair.

Jeanti said even now, she still gets goosebumps when she listens to them.

“Telling intimate stories is a great way to get a bigger view of what happened with a major event,” Jeanti said.

“So often history is documented by numbers and we don’t know the stories and flood stories gives us 10 of them.

“The stories range from 10 minutes to 32 minutes and I have frequent listener cards, where if you visit six times, you get a free coffee at Slate Café.

“We hoped to launch the project last year, but we were delayed by Covid.

“It’s three years on now since Cyclone Debbie did Lismore and we’ve had minor and moderate floods and flash floods since then.

“I think we’ve had enough time and emotional space that we can listen to these stories without being impacted too emotionally by them.

Therapeutic

“We are hoping it will be a healing process for the community.

“We hope we can learn what we need to learn as a community being a flood town.

“There’s reflection about how we can become more resilient – we’ve even had bushfires and Covid disasters since 2017 too.

“When you listen to the stories, you feel that your story of the flood is valid too. – and it’s been therapeutic for the story tellers too.

Healing

“Part of the process of bringing the stories to the public was making sure story tellers were happy with the final version of the story.

“I had so many of them come back to me and say the story captured their experience and they cried – a therapeutic crying, there’s a real love there. We’re all grateful the project has given us space to be able to do that.”

Jyllie Jackson

For Jyllie Jackson, organiser of the Lismore lantern Parade, telling her story to Jeanti for the Flood Stories project and hearing it back finally allowed her to finally have a cry.

Jyllie had unsuccessfully tried to save the lanterns in the lantern workshop from being flooded and knew she had to “keep it together”.

“The process was very helpful to me,” Jyllie said.

“I didn’t cry at all when it happened. I was stoic. As the boss lady, I couldn’t cry – that was my leadership role.”

Read more about Jyllie’s flood story on the Lismore App, as she reveals her plans to bring business back into the Lismore CBD, despite Covid enforced changes to this year’s Lantern parade event: CBD traders set to benefit from Lantern Parade's surprise offshoot event

Flood stories will be in the Quad until May 6 and more information can be found on the Quad website.

Flood Stories operating times:

Thursday April 29 11am-2pm, and 4-6pm 

Friday April 30 11am-2pm, and 4-6pm 

Saturday May 1 11am-2pm

Sunday May 2 12pm-2pm

Monday May 3 closed

Tuesday May 4 11am-2pm

Wednesday May 5 11am-2pm

Thursday May 6 11am-2pm, and 4-6pm