As more and more Christmas lights appear on houses across Lismore and the Northern Rivers, one of Lismore's spectacular business light displays is battling to flick the switch for Monday, December 1.

Tracy Ward took over the South Lismore Post Office in 2024, and last year she created a Christmas light display that drew many people to make a special trip to South Lismore to enjoy the amazing spectacle.

(South Lismore Post Office with its 2024 Christmas decorations. The front weatherboards had to be replaced.)

Tracy is under the pump this year because the front weatherboards suffered wood rot from the 2022 floods, which had deteriorated so much that something had to be done.

"You can't put a display on walls that are falling apart. It was becoming a hazard to the health and occupational safety of the community.

"It was all flood damage from the amount of water that we received from the last couple of floods, but particularly '22 left us with wood rot so severe that, anywhere along, it was the paint holding the building together. And where the paint was coming away, there were holes through the building, and that put us in a very precarious position."

"There's still a lot of damage that needs to be restored. It's just not the front wall; the side wall is now in the same situation. We get to that next"

That precarious position left Tracy scrambling for timbers that could match those of the building, originally built in the 1880s and has been operating as a Post Office since 1936, to keep with its heritage.

Enter Minister for Recovery and Member for Lismore, Janelle Saffin, and the NSW Reconstruction Authority (RA).

Yesterday, Minister Saffin said Tracy reached out to ask where such heritage timbers could be found. Ms Saffin referred the problem to Kristie Clarke at the RA, who found some new/old weatherboards that matched Tracy's brief.

"There was a big gaping hole that I'd seen when I was out walking, and they (the RA) were able to source the timbers, and the timbers are really old timbers. Tracy will talk about that, but they actually come from one of the houses that had to be demolished in Pine Street, North Lismore."

As you can see from the photo, the walls are built and in the process of being bogged and sanded. They then need to be painted so that the Christmas decorations can be added next weekend with the help of staff from the Comm Bank.

"We're going to clean her. We're going to undercoat her. I've got till the end of this week to have her painted enough so that I can get Christmas up. I've just got to get the paint on, because we've got this wonderful promise from Comm Bank locally. It was really mind-blowing to have them come in and say, Right, that's it, how many people do you need? We're going to lend these people to you. So, next weekend, we've probably got a big team landing. We'll get this thing up.

"And now, at least I can breathe a bit easier knowing that if we do run into trouble this storm season, we're not going to have a huge hole through the front of the building."

Tracy is a single mother of four, so she knows how difficult it is not to keep a promise to children.

"The lights have to be running on December 1 because we've made a promise. You can't break a promise to children. So yes, I am running on no sleep, but that's okay, and I will be working 14 hours a day, like I always do in Post. I'll be up at 530, I'll be in the shop just after six. I'll be leaving at six, and after work, I will be putting up the Christmas display. But that's okay, because, like I said, we pay very, very heartily here."

Minister Saffin added, "The Christmas display and the associated activities, and what it does, how it includes all the children, and includes the community. That alone is enough to say, Yep, we've got to help."

If you would like to help Tracy achieve her goal of getting her daughter, Heidi, to switch on the Christmas Lights on December 1, pop in to 73 Union Street, South Lismore and ask what needs to be done and when she needs the most help.

Your support will help ensure the post office is repaired and ready for its much-loved Christmas decorations - a long-standing local tradition and symbol of community spirit in South Lismore.

For Tracy, that spirit is driven by Heidi's story, the Christmas after the 2022 flood.

"Heidi is my little girl, and after the flood, she asked Santa, two years running, for the same thing, and it was heartbreaking. She asked him for a toilet and a bed, and Santa didn't have the capacity to provide that. So I made a promise to myself that when Santa was able to provide that for my children, that I would make sure no other child missed out on Christmas, and that was what sparked this last year.

"So, it was a little girl who asked for something that you shouldn't have to ask for in a first-world country, and wasn't able to have that fulfilled. So last year, when the lights turned on, Heidi came to Santa Claus, and she had a sack on her shoulder, and she proudly marched up the stairs, and she flicked that light. She doesn't know yet, but she's going to have that same opportunity this year to come and to turn on those lights. We will have a light-turning-on ceremony again.

"We will make this happen. And, yeah, Merry Christmas.