Chiara Clear is a musician and music therapist who lives in County Wicklow in the Republic of Ireland. She grew up, however, in Lismore and had a recent visit to her old home town for the first time since the flood disaster. Chiara took some time to do a Sunday Profile interview with her younger sister, Sara Browne.

We arrived here as a family after a very brief time of living in Port Macquarie and when I got here I went into St Carthage's repeating grade five because I was a bit young. I have great memories of playing handball there and meeting friends for life. I went through what was known as St Mary's at the time, across the road.

In year 10, I had a great year and I thought I was going to leave to become a hairdresser. I did work experience with my gorgeous friend Nicole Byrnes whose mum had a friend who was a hairdresser. That was up Tweed way. I had a great time and came back and told mum and dad ‘that’s it, I’m leaving school and becoming a hairdresser.’

I didn’t leave school though. I loved music, I was doing that in a low-fi way, but sport was more important during my early high school years. I played basketball at Lismore Stadium. I was also a bit of a gun hockey player, so much so that at one point, St Mary's team was pretty bad and not going anywhere, it stopped, in terms of being competitive as a school so I signed up for Lismore High School to play for their hockey team and I also tried out for the first preliminary round of the under 18s Australian women’s hockey team. That didn’t come to anything.

I stayed on at school and once I got over wanting to be a hairdresser and a national hockey player, I realised I wanted to go to uni. I had this idea that I had to give up everything because it was about putting my head down for those last two years. They were pretty influential for my music, I did music as an elective, I chose to do it for year 11 and 12 and I had an incredible music teacher. Her name was Felicity Andreasen – oh my god she was legendary.

It was a very small class, which I adored, we bothered and annoyed everyone with our desire to perform at every school assembly. My instrument was my voice and flute, I’d been learning flute for years. I do remember having a moment singing Shirley Bassey's ‘Hey big spender’ in the St Marys hall, up on the stage, a cappella I believe, having no idea what the song was really about, probably hadn’t investigated it.

The big deal that year, in year 12, was the music we were studying from the soundtrack of the film The Mission by Ennio Morricone and Les Misérables. I remember Felicity Andreasen came along one day to class and saying ‘right, we’re all going to Sydney to see Les Mis on stage. I’m flying you all down, putting you up for the night, then we’ll come back the next day.’ She paid for it all. It was the Theatre Royal. It was astounding stuff. I think we all did so well that year because we wanted to do well for her.

At that point, I was thinking I’d pursue a career in music but I was desperate to get out of Lismore. I ended up taking the first six months after school in Sydney working as a nanny. Then I came back thinking I might become a nurse, following my older sister’s steps, and went to Brisbane and enrolled and started studying nursing at Princess Alexandria Hospital. I did nine months of that and then thought no. I ended up back in Lismore studying contemporary music which was the first year of the contemporary music degree run by Clive ????

It was still the University of New England, Northern Rivers campus on Magellan Street. We were very lucky because the transition was happening to the campus that is now Southern Cross. Our first year group of the degree was the very last group to be on the downtown campus at what is now known as the Con. We felt like we had fame school going on down there. There was no one else from any other departments bothering us. We were the bees knees. You had to audition to get in. I auditioned for Valerie Tamblyn Mills, once an actress in the TV series Prisoner, and others on the panel.

I had a year there at that site getting involved in absolutely everything including meeting the incredible staff that had all come up from Sydney to start teaching. They were all members of the 70s/80s fusion band Crossfire which was Jim Kelly, Greg Lyons and Steve Hope and all those guys…Tony Buchanan. They were good teachers and they were the coolest dudes.

They had great stories and they played with everyone and they had their own bands going on. They were intimidating when you had to work with them and be put in a band with other musicians. You learnt your chops. But they were always very supportive and pointed you in the right direction – including the downtown CD shop to buy Aretha’s Blues which was on sale for 10 bucks. We’re talking 1990. That was an album that changed my life.

In my second year, I received a scholarship and I also had an opportunity to go to Nashville, Tennessee. I got a publishing deal with Warner Chappell, all that stuff had come just from the exposure of being there in that music environment.

Once I finished those three years I headed off to Sydney and thought ‘this is where I want to be’. I had 10 solid years in Sydney – with some travel – performing and recording and getting into studios and making good money from jingles, working live five or six nights a week all around Sydney.

I then started travelling to Europe and trying to carve out a more original career. I spent time in London and Edinburgh, coming and going between Australia.

When I was travelling I loved telling people I was from Lismore. I said I was based in Sydney but I loved telling them where I grew up and I was born in Melbourne and lived around the east coast but settled in Lismore. I told them about the study here at the incredible course and the staff. It’s always good to talk about where you’re from. I visited back here during that time because Mum and Dad are still here, were always here. My siblings had all moved on.

I remember experiencing floods all through school. I was on the flood squad for St Mary's. If you lived within a five-kilometre radius of school, which we did – we lived on Music Street for a long time – you were a part of the team that would get called down to lift and pack everything up. I think it was more exciting than scary at that time because school wasn’t on. I do recall packing a load of stuff up. I also recall being on the highest level of the building and sticking my head out a window and putting my hand in the water.

I recall my father being very involved with flood support through St Vincent de Paul, which was part of his job. Fortunately, where we lived, we were out of the flood zone but there was always someone to help. Mainly it was more mum and dad involved with community but if you were on the flood squad you were expected to come and help out at school.

Home now is Ireland. Up until the pandemic, it was Melbourne but before Melbourne, it was Ireland as well.

When I was travelling, I did a lot of playing in London and Edinburgh. I did some festival and busking gigs during the European summer. I was trying to decide to live away for a while. I couldn’t afford to keep hopping around so I decided to pack up and go for a year rather than a six-week block. I thought it was going to be Edinburgh because I loved it. But then a crazy Irish girlfriend who I’d met in Sydney encouraged me to go to Dublin. I’d been there as a backpacker and I loved it. So I said goodbye to everyone in Australia thinking I’d go for a year and have a crack at it and see what happens. I met that friend in Dublin and she introduced me to a load of people. One year became 10 years. I met my now husband in Dublin in a show that we were both in, he’s an actor.

There’s definitely a destiny for me with music that I feel I am meant to tread. I just couldn’t do anything else as good as the way I did it. And nor did I have the focus or dedication for anything else. In saying that, I recorded an album and I continue to be a musician but my focus now is as a music therapist.

I went back to Melbourne deliberately from Ireland to study a Masters in Music Therapy which I’d always wanted to do. I remember the day I finished at SCU, I went up to Greg Lyons and gave him a hug saying thanks for everything. I said ‘I’m going to give it a try for a year and see what happens.’ He said ‘how about 10 years and see what happens…’ And I said ‘ok I’ll give it 10 years.’ I did but I think, even when I graduated, I knew at some point I’d get to music therapy but it was a seriously long way around.

Music therapy does require some belief in the power of music but it’s the science that marries the belief in music to make you a music therapist, if that makes sense. Anyone nowadays can call themselves a music therapist. If you’ve studied, you have to be registered to be a practising music therapist. I’m now registered in Ireland but also with the Australian Music Therapy Association.

We have a code of conduct and ethics. We can work with some of the most vulnerable people so we have to be incredibly careful with how we work. There’s a high level of confidentiality at times, depending on the setting. So you could be in a very clinical setting, as I was three years ago before I left Melbourne. I was in a palliative care setting in Royal Melbourne Hospital. Or you could be in a community setting where you still have to work according to a code of conduct but it might be a broader way of working with clients.

Certainly in end-of-life care, I’ve seen how a family can find a way to say their goodbyes, open up and connect for the first time in a very long time – in this particular case it was a family connecting with their mother who was dying of lung cancer. Through the use of song and song choices that she was the focus of, I was able to provide them a way of singing and playing that allowed them to interact through the songs, using the lyrics to express themselves about what was happening in front of them which was their mother dying and then passing away. Through those songs, they were able to reflect and reminisce about the life they’d had with each other and use the songs to build a way of saying goodbye when it looked like they just could not say anything to each other. They could express their fears and their love and all these elements that had been such a struggle for them as a family, a very vulnerable family who had a lot of sadness in their family history anyway. They went away with recordings of those sessions. They were able to finish the circle of life with her in a way that I believe they would not never have been able to do without the use of music. There was no other service offered in that setting that they wanted. They weren’t interested in talk therapy. They weren’t interested in art, though art therapy was on offer at the time. They found a way to grieve with what they found in those sessions after that time.

This is my first visit back to Lismore since the floods. Aesthetically, it’s still very evident that there is a lot of damage and a lot of infrastructure that’s struggling to come back to life. There is a lot of homes that have big question marks over them…whether they’ll be there next time I’m around…or something new. At the same time, I’ve been aware on social media about this premise of Resilient Lismore and the resilience of the people in Lismore. I feel like I’ve witnessed that since I’ve been here and I think it's great to drive around and see the signs of things coming back. Even just to be at the uni campus knowing that it’s become this hub for renewal. I think it’s amazing. For example, the Trinity kids being there on campus, there will be benefits that come from that for them going to school on a university campus. Even just the amenities…I’ve been using the pool since I’ve been here, with my daughter, and I think maybe, if people had no connection to the uni before the flood, now they’re in need, they have access to the facilities. Let alone the beauty of the campus itself, all of that.

It's incredible that there are all these spaces around Lismore that have been converted to social spaces. I went to the gallery and the Thursday market down there. I can’t imagine it happening in other places but in Lismore I can imagine it because it's full of such creative people. It’s known for that. But I also think it could be a template for other regional towns that get knocked about through disasters. Lismore could be looked upon as… this is how we did it, try this out where you live. It was so good to be at the Farmer’s Market and see people supporting that. People must still be fatigued and dealing with trauma. It’s very obvious in some ways.

There was some international media that showed the Lismore floods to us in Ireland. I use the Lismore App, funnily enough, just to see local things like that as well. I was having people contact me having seen the news to ask ‘are your parents ok? What’s going on? It looks really bad.’ Lismore has an Irish city sister - Lismore in County Waterford – and there is still the potential for that to be a connection for fundraising and recognition after the devastation here. I contacted someone there about that and she had heard that Lismore NSW was under threat of being taken away by floods. Anything that happens on the east coast of Australia, my Irish family and friends want to know my knowledge of it.

There is definitely a personality that links Irish and Australian culture. Obviously historically, there is an Irish population – both currently and in our white Australian history book – that is very embedded here. It goes way back. Even in my own family, there is a story of a female ancestor who was a bread stealer being on one of the ships. She left Macroom in County Cork and came out to Australia. There are loads of stories like that here as there is across the world with an Irish connection.

Private vocal coaching with Irish actress Fionnula Flannagan (and pooch Betty) preparing for her role in the Hunger Games prequel currently in production

There is a fondness for Australians in Ireland, especially with the younger generation. The population of Ireland is getting younger and younger. They still travel to all the major centres like Sydney, Melbourne, Byron no doubt. When I was telling my school community where my daughter goes to school that we were getting ready to come home for a visit here, they just can’t believe that we have this opportunity to leave the Irish climate – the typical winter that’s about to start – to come to this part of Australia. It's so known for the beaches and all the places people want to go when they dream about coming here.

There’s a fun, dry, wittiness that translates very well to Australians. There’s a lot of messing in Irish humour that takes quite an adjustment and I think Australians are well up for that. Perhaps, without getting too political, there is that connection between the British and the British Empire and its ruling of the colonies.

There’s lots I miss about living away from here, apart from my family of course. One thing I love when I’m here – and I encourage my daughter to stick it in her memory bank – it’s the smells and the sounds. The flora and the fauna of Australia is so unique and you just have to try bottle it and take it back with you. You hear all these other natural world features in Ireland but they are just nothing like here. The sunsets, the big skies…people think I’m mad in Ireland when I say the sky in Ireland is very close to the top of your head. They think I’m off my head. But it’s true – you go to Australia – the idea of the big sky country – it's absolutely true. I guess it's embedded in our first nations peoples’ mythology.

It was one of the things that struck me when I first went to Europe, being in places like Scotland, UK, Ireland, the sky is much closer to your head. It just feels like you could lift your hand up and take something out of it. Whereas in Australia, under the open sky, its fecking vast. You’re never going to get close. I try to explain that to people in Europe that haven’t been to Australia. If someone has been, they can kind of go with you on it. But if they’ve never been – it’s not something they’re ever going to get.

https://www.safeandsoundmusictherapy.com/