In 1979, Dr Andrew Binns and his artist wife Jeni, arrived in Lismore with their eldest son, a love for the area and no jobs. Through the decades since, family, arts, medicine and community have grown and intertwined to keep them here, as Andrew tells Sara Browne.

We arrived here in 1979. I’m from Adelaide, born and bred, Jeni was born and bred in the Barossa Valley. We were already married when we came here, we had our eldest boy Dougal with us then, he was turning three. When we got here, we had to establish ourselves and find jobs and all that sort of thing. It turned out that I couldn’t find a job, which might sound strange. We’d also tried in Port Lincoln. I had just come back from overseas a few months before. I was adequately qualified for rural practice but there just wasn’t the work available at the time so I set up my own, I squatted as the saying goes. It wasn’t really my intention, I was hoping I’d be able to join a practice.

I set up a little practice in Gumtree Drive, Goonellabah. It was a bit slow to start with. Jeni was my receptionist. She got a bit of work across the road at the Northern Star because she was a graphic designer. It was not easy but we gradually got going.

We met in Sydney when I was studying medicine. She had already completed her studies in visual arts in Adelaide but she was living in Sydney and working as a graphic designer.

All her family are creative people. It doesn’t come from my side of the family. I can’t draw or anything but they can, all of them. Tuckwell was her maiden name. The Tuckwell clan are generally creative people. We’ve got a lot of nieces and nephews who are in creative industries.

Andrew and Jeni's wedding day, Buderim QLD, 1973

My grandfather on my father’s side was a bookbinder in Adelaide in the early days. My father did medicine, he studied at the Royal Adelaide Hospital then went into general practice like myself and then he went to the second world war and headed up an ambulance unit.

They soon found themselves in the Libyan desert where Rommel’s forces were coming through, the axis forces on the German side. They were captured and my father became a prisoner of war. He spent a lot of time there. I’m a post-war baby. He was an older father, he was born in 1901. He had a challenging time obviously, during those war years. He didn’t talk really about that much. You pick up a few things but it wasn’t talked about.

When he was repatriated, he was sent to Darwin and then Katherine because the Japanese bombing had occurred and there was a need up there at that time. He developed an interest in aboriginal health during that time so that probably rubbed off a bit on me, although he never spoke about that terribly much. There would have been some siblings living in Adelaide during that time that he was posted up there.

He ended up specializing in psychiatry, not surprisingly he spent a lot of time with returned soldiers, dealing with what is now called PTSD. They called it shellshock or something but it brings the same sort of mental health issues resulting from being in a war zone. It’s happening just as much today. He also dealt with patients in rehabilitation from alcoholism.

He didn’t push me in any particular direction but you absorb a little bit just in passing but it wasn’t active, it was passive. I’m the youngest – I’ve got two older brothers and a sister. One went into ministry and then mission work, one went into engineering and another – educational psychology. It’s a bit of a mix.

Mum was a home mother but she was an artist, she did quite a bit of painting. We had works of hers on display at home but it was more of a hobby, I guess. We had a good life in suburban Adelaide. Those post-war years were fairly uncomplicated. We’d head off in the morning with the dog and come back after dark, as you did in those days. We mucked around up in the hills, we lived in the foothills of Adelaide. They were good times.

Portrait of Andrew by Jeni, pastel and pencil

I did a science degree first in Adelaide and then decided to do medicine. The opportunities were better in Sydney at the time so I moved over there. It was hard work but we had a good social life so there was a balance. I lived in Woollahra for a while, in a group house, I had a lot of friends. It was the 70s, they were good times.

We have travelled. The most adventurous was in 1976, we flew to Kathmandu and hiked in the Himalayas before bus-ing and hitch-hiking overland through Nepal to Europe. I can’t imagine doing that today

Jeni’s late brother, Elliot, had a tropical fruit farm out at Teven and we fell in love with the area, like everybody does.

I have a long-standing connection with patients but also, I used to deliver babies. Sometimes an adult person will remind me I was there for their birth, that’s always nice when that happens.

Lyndon Terracini, Dr Phil Steele, Andrew, Bill Sheaffe, working bee for the Gasworks Arts Centre Project, 1991

Fairly soon after we arrived, art and health started to cross over. We could see that it was a creative area, there was a lot of artists around. Jeni teamed up with some friends who were also artists and went to various groups together and exhibited their work in joint exhibitions. Then I got involved in organizing some exhibitions at the Lismore City Hall, that was with some support from Rotary, I was a member.

We ran quite a few exhibitions there, local and other Australian artists. We also, later on, ran art and craft exhibitions and they were very successful. There was a lot of interesting craft work made here and we liked to promote that.

Then I got involved a bit in the performing arts, not because I’m a performer or anything but because I met Lyndon Terracini. He had the vision - also with Liz Terracini - to set up a performing arts company called NORPA.

Lyndon Terracini is currently the artistic director of Opera Australia. He’s going to finish that job soon, I think. He had a lot of creative energy and we ran whole seasons of work. I was on the board and various committees that got it going, working with a whole lot of other people as well. We had some fascinating times in those days. I was still busy as a GP at the time, it was an outside activity. It’s nice to see it’s still going.

I was involved in the media as well. I was part owner of the Lismore Echo that became the Northern Rivers Echo, it was an offshoot from the Byron Echo initially. We found it difficult to maintain the newspaper financially and it was eventually sold to Australian Provincial Newspapers which was ultimately taken over by the Murdoch press. It was a bit sad when we lost the Echo. But, that’s life. Now we’ve got things like the Lismore App.

The meeting of arts and health comes particularly, I believe, with mental health. Art fulfils an important role in people’s lives, giving people a sense of meaning. I think sport is also good to group people together, physically as well as mentally. I think the arts particularly is stimulating for people, it brings people together for a common cause, whether they’re artists themselves or consuming the art.

This area is very strong in music, visual and performing arts and therefore, it has fitted nicely. I’ve always tried to connect it with health to some degree.

There are art therapists but I don’t think there are that many around here. However, I do believe that people find their own way and I think those that do have a mental health issue can find it helpful to be involved in art in some way. Either as an artist or consumer of it.

I’ve written a fair bit about that in my blog. I do see a strong connection. I think even more so today – after covid and now this dreadful flood – the creative industries do fulfil a role for people. It’s important in the mix of things.

Sign at the Lismore Rainforest Botanic Gardens featuring Andrew and Jeni's grandaughter, Aroha

I’ve supported Norpa throughout the years, and the regional gallery. I also like to support the green side of things – like the Lismore Rainforest Botanic Gardens, been supporting that for some years. If you haven’t been there, you should check it out. It’s developing. That’s my green project, I guess.

It’s such a vibrant area in all these things. I think for people’s mental health- to be involved in something – it doesn’t matter if it’s a sport or a club or men’s shed or whatever – it’s just giving people a sense of purpose over and above their working life. It’s important.

We have a lot of art work at our Goonellabah Medical Centre, it’s almost like an art gallery there. That softens it a bit for people, it’s not overly clinical. At the same time, we are a clinical service but I think art is just one way of making it a bit better for people. We surround ourselves with art at home. It’s part of our therapeutic reprieve. We’ve collected a lot of work over the years.

I’m not too sure what’s going to become of all that work, mind you. Our children are a bit the same, they have a lot of art too. My youngest son, Fergus, is an artist. He also teaches art at one of the gaols in Castlemaine. Dougal is a graphic designer and he does art as well. We’re storing a lot of family stuff at the moment as a result of the flood. We’ve had family members affected.

I’m 75 now and I’m fairly busy and still working but you start to plan ahead a bit. I like the writing side of things, I’m interested in some history as well. I’m interested in the history of psychiatry, I’ve got a lot of content gathered from my earlier years.

There may be a bit of memoir later but I’ve been involved in contributing to this magazine called Nordocs. You can check the latest edition, particularly because it brings in the flood issue. We’ve got a journalist, Robin Osborne, he lives in Canberra now but he is still the editor of the magazine. I work with Angela Bettess, she’s the graphics person who puts that together and then David Guest who is the clinical editor. I write some content and have done for many years, I think in 1993 we started producing a little rag. Some of the ideas came from the Echo actually, as to how to run a newspaper or magazine, like how the funding and advertising works to support these things.

I do a fair bit of bike-riding still. I went out this morning for a couple or hours, got a bit wet but it wasn’t too bad.

I’m starting to think about retirement. I’m sure I’ll keep busy though. I think the key to retirement – and I’ve written about this too – is that you have to plan ahead and have lots of activities that you intend to get involved in.

We set up an organization called Australian Lifestyle Medicine and it’s linked in with a whole lot of like organisations around the world and it’s now called the Australasian Society of Lifestyle Medicine.

We started it here in Lismore and I worked with two good friends, John Stevens from Mullumbimby and Garry Egger who is Sydney-based. It connects to dietary matters, physical activity, we talk a lot about that. We’re up to the third edition of the lifestyle medicine book, we’re planning another edition to keep it fresh.

Australia Medal award presented by The Hon Dame Marie Bashir in 2002, for services to medicine and health education, particularly lifestyle health awareness and palliative care, and to the community of Lismore.

Some people’s medical needs have changed since the flood. We’ve been seeing a lot of skin infections, for example, people having a slight injury that’s been exposed to unclean water and picking up things.

Probably the stand out thing is the mental health issue. We’re doing a lot of listening at the moment. I think GPs will be all very busy at the moment just listening to story after story of people’s dramas related to the flood. Some of them nearly lost their lives. Even those people who rescued them are suffering from trauma as well, they risked their own lives while rescuing others.

There’s a lot of heroism out there. It’s extraordinary what was done with tinnies and other floating objects in saving all those people, so many stranded. And a lot of them were immersed in water for some time, some nearly drowned. Many got to rooves or had to break through rooves etc to be saved and the people in the tinnies who were called upon to assist the SES, saved an enormous number of people, including my own granddaughter. Our 16-year-old granddaughter was staying with some friends down the river near Woodburn and they got trapped and eventually a neighbouring farmer with a boat – who had lost his place – rescued them and got them out. I think also one of the other traumatic things was the number of cattle and so on drowning and lost. That was all pretty traumatic.

I have a couple of grandchildren in Melbourne and a couple here. Actually, one from here is now in Melbourne studying nursing. She’s actually very creative, she might end up in the performing arts.

There is a big concern about the world that will be inherited, particularly around the climate issue, I think it’s huge. It hasn’t been taken seriously enough. I think these floods have been an eye-opener for many. Some of the climate change deniers have gone a bit quiet lately. I don’t know why that is.

I think we’ve got to take it more seriously and listen to what the scientists keep telling us - to expect more severe extremes – we’re seeing that without any doubt at all. The various measures required to deal with that have to be taken very seriously otherwise we’re going to see more of the same and it’s going to be very disruptive to people’s lives. It’s a huge concern for the city of Lismore but not only here, upstream and downstream from Lismore.

I’ve never really considered living anywhere else. We do like Melbourne, we’ve got a lot of relatives down there. It’s my favourite city, I think Jeni would agree. It’s convenient to jump on a plane from here to get there but we’ll keep coming back here.

Eventually, we’ll have to move away from this house that was built in 1910. We’ve added a bit on. We like the area, like everyone does. But I think we’ve got major issues in front of us, to work out what’s going to happen. That will take a long time. There’ll be people that will have no alternative but to return to their houses. There’ll be, likewise, people that will return to their businesses. But where it all ends up, I’m not too sure.