Felicity Clifton is a teacher in the Community Music Program of the Northern Rivers Conservatorium. Love of nature, travel, music and singing are themes of Felicity's life that brought her and her family to make Lismore their home in 1991. Felicity shared her story with Sara Browne.

As a child I loved nature and swimming, I still do. I grew up in the Northern Beaches of Sydney in Collaroy. Living right by the beach was heavenly. As a family we had some very memorable overseas holidays in New Zealand and Fiji. As I grew, I developed a burning passion to travel. Both my older brother and sister took off backpacking through Europe. 

When I was 20 years old I followed in their footsteps. I travelled overseas for about 18 months with my backpack and guitar. By the time I had saved enough money and was ready to go, my boyfriend decided to travel with me for the first 2 weeks, to Sri Lanka and the Maldives. We had a great holiday together but then went our separate ways. I planned to travel onto Europe after that and he returned to Australia.  

Travelling through Greece, I met some great people on the way. One of those people I met I’m still friends with so that’s really cool. I had done some secretarial, office type training when I left school so I used those skills when I got to London and based myself there where I had an aunty and uncle. They had a country manor house in Kent as well as a terrace house right in the middle of London in Sloane Square. I managed to get temp work and travelled from there. I met a friend and we travelled to Morocco together. My friend got really sick so I ended up having to stay by her side and help her through. It was quite a serious sickness. She nearly died. I ran out of money. I was working in a travel agency in Marrakesh. We were stuck there. My brother came to my rescue. We ended up travelling back to Greece together.

Home was Sydney when I returned but once back I thought what the hell am I going to do with my life? I was really unsettled. I tried some more office work. I found myself going to amateur acting classes and dance classes and things like that. I did a massage course at a naturopathic centre in St Leonards. I then started a massage business which I did from clinics and from home. 

I had met my husband before I went overseas. We met in an office block in North Sydney. We were just mates. When I got back I looked up Bill and he was managing a wine bar and he gave me a job at Bevy’s Place in Mosman. We developed more of a relationship from there. 

Wellington, New Zealand, 2020

I learned to meditate at a centre in Sydney. I was needing to delve into my psychology. I guess I was dealing with being a bit unsettled and not knowing which path to take. We got married in 86, had two kids and then in 91, we came to the Northern Rivers. I had some friends up here. I had a step-sister as well living in Mullumbimby. I felt I needed to get out of Sydney. I felt very claustrophobic there and was really hankering for community.

Before we left I did an acapella singing course. That was when I really started to realise that singing was my thing. I knew I wanted to pursue that. A little later it was to become my career. The urge to sing was particularly powerful after I gave birth to my second child. 

I dragged my husband up here, he said why? I said let’s try it. He was working in his own business as an independent Loss Assessor. The industry changed to a certain extent. Insurers trained staff to replace independent operators. He needed to make a move as well. He was a bit of a workaholic, working several jobs and a bit depleted. I suggested we try a new start, start a new life.

It was brave or silly, one or the other, a bit of both. After my first child was born I became interested in childbirth education because it was a difficult birth and I really wanted to learn more. The childbirth educator I’d had when I was first pregnant was a Sannyasin. Her perspective interested me and I liked what she did. I liked how she reached us as new parents and how she taught us about childbirth. So after my son was born I went into childbirth education. 

My second child was born at home. My homebirth midwife instilled such a belief in me and my capabilities to give birth. Even though I really believed in homebirth, it got a bad rap. There were a lot of people concerned about it. 

I felt alone in my childbirth experience and as a new parent. I discovered that I needed more community around me, to tap into the possibilities of what that could be. I became a birth support person and went to lots of births in the community. I used to run pregnancy support groups in the Byron Bay Community Centre. I was then offered an apprenticeship with a homebirth midwife.

A career in homebirth midwifery required a degree of political activism. A political animal I was not. I married one. He’s got super strong opinions about politics and everything else. I’ve formed my own as well. I was never really an activist. I pull away from that kind of thing. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t passionate. 

Felicity and husband Bill, stylised photo

We moved from Mullum to Lismore in 96 as the kids were getting older, we were thinking about high school. We thought Lismore had good diversity and a bit more to offer. I went to the Conservatorium and did a diploma course in music with a voice major and then ended up at Southern Cross Uni in 99 and that’s where I completed my degree in contemporary music majoring in vocals.  

I met some great people there at SCU. I did performances in the area and got more involved in the songwriting side of things. My vocal tutor, Leigh Carriage, was very supportive of the authentic voice and finding your unique voice. So that encouraged me to write songs and go down that track. I recorded an EP of 4 songs.

I didn’t play in bands as such. After uni, I wanted to join a choir. I decided to start one and that’s how the whole community choir thing started for me. It’s been a good journey. I started one out at Tuntable Creek that went for three years. 

During this time my sister, Jen, invited me to co-direct a singing group in Italy. “Singing in Sienna”. That was a magic trip. The group consisted of a diverse group of people from Australia and beyond. And what a setting! We had many lovely singing experiences. One was singing in a charming little village in the Tuscan hills. Jen had found a magic venue that was once an old church no longer used for services.

Whilst preparing material to teach, I found the literal translation of a song that had very saucy lyrics. What I had originally believed the lyrics to mean, I later found out from a specialist in linguistics that they meant something very different. I was advised that perhaps not to teach it as we were so close geographically to its source and it may be lost in translation so to speak. 

Another trip with my sister was to Samoa. We had some very special singing experiences with the locals in their churches. A month after returning home we had a flood in Lismore. I found out that the very village we had stayed in were tragically hit by a Tsunami. 

Whilst I was working at the Con teaching singing I was contacted by a group called New Horizons who offered programs, help and support for those in the community with mental health issues. They’d heard of the Choir of Hard Knocks. They were looking for a choir director and contacted me. I was still doing the Tuntable Creek choir plus another one at the Con. So that’s how the Hearing Voices Choir started. That was a real journey into learning about mental health and understanding the difficulties and problems that some of us deal with.

That choir was a great success and it was really well received. We got invited to perform at a mental health conference in Sydney. We flew down, some people hadn’t been on a plane before, there was screaming with joy and excitement as the plane took off. It was a wonderful, life-affirming experience – singing to psychiatrists and doctors and trying to express to them how important the choir was and what wonderful benefits it brought to the choir members.

When sadly one choir member who had schizophrenia all his life passed away, in celebration of his life a member of the choir wrote a poem that we set to music and a song was born. It became a theme song for our choir and was named “Hearing Voices”. We were then invited to his funeral to sing that song. That was very meaningful, a wonderful way to express our dear friends’ life. He was a beautiful man, he would arrive at choir with a big smile. “Peter, Peter, it’s good to see ya..”

I did do high school music teaching for a little time but I felt it was wrecking my voice by the end of the week. It was a difficult subject to teach I found and the community choirs were a calling for me. I was able to make a living, to a certain degree, teaching and leading choirs.

I led the choir, Inspired Voices Choir at Caroona Aged Care Home in Goonellabah. It had been going for ten years and their director left and asked me if I would take it over and I did that for three years.

Felicity with Gwenith Boland, pianist for the Inspired Voices Choir, Uniting Caroona Aged Care, Goonellabah 

That had its own rewards too. They were special people and were so grateful for that opportunity to come together. There’s lots of activity they do in nursing homes but the choir had a special meaning for all of us. It really is about communicating with the heart with other people. Singing is an emotional language that is unique and it brings people together in a unique way. We had a couple of big concerts each year, the mid-winter one and a Christmas concert. We had other guests perform as well, school kids sang a few songs.

The Christmas time concert was pretty important to the members. We always had a trumpet player to play on a few carols which made it special. It would all happen on-site as it was dependent on staff and volunteers to bring residents together from each household. 3 in all. Sometimes they wouldn’t want to come out of their rooms but once they’d get there, they’d enjoy it.

It can be so lonely and isolating, some residents just shut their door and don’t open it. So it was a delight to see the residents interact and enjoy each other’s company by way of singing together until covid hit and the nursing home tragically had to pull the plug. 

I continue to work in the community studies department at the Con teaching singing and early childhood music. The singing tuition is primarily interest-based and not particularly graded. It is available to all ages and ability. We do offer programs that are exam based such as AMEB and Trinity College as well as support for HSC students. Students are taught the basics of singing and have opportunities to grow from there. I also teach early childhood music, have done for the last ten years or more. That’s two to five-year-olds, taking the music programs to preschools. Families also come on-site at the Con. It’s very rewarding to see how the music positively invites community participation and enhances communication.  

I joined Isabella Acappella in 2018. I’m keen to tour Japan with them. There’s a whole new lineup, I’m really quite fond of everyone. I’m the eldest member. Pre-Covid we sang at the SCU Graduation Ceremonies. Our Director, Grace Cockburn has done a great job in keeping things going bearing in mind all the restrictions. A dark time for the arts sector. I miss our regular rehearsals and opportunities to perform.  

At the Con we’re teaching online for now. It’s not ideal but it’s better than nothing that’s for sure. The students can see themselves on screen, which in of itself is a good learning tool as a singer. They also have the option to record so they can go over things during the week if they need to. 

It's strange times now of course with Covid. Over the past 10 years my husband, Bill, has been dealing with a severe medical condition which has changed the course of our lives to a degree. We joined our local Croquet Club. This has created another level of community for me. I love that. I miss seeing my son and daughter-in-law and one and only 9-year-old grandson, Ollie. They live in Brisbane. I am very grateful to have the technology to make a connection though. My daughter and boyfriend came over from New Zealand in July and are still here. Working from home. We are so grateful to spend this time with them. It’s been 18 months since we last spent time with them. 

I’ve always wanted to paint so last year I started that. Also, I bought a piano from a lovely friend and that is a great source of joy. I like gardening and going to the Saturday Farmers’ markets and being with my community. I love my musical community and running into people I know and have worked and played within our local music scene. Also seeing my students grow and develop brings me great joy and a deep sense of community and connection.   

I’ve spent half my life here now so I feel more rooted here than ever. I love Lismore. I can’t imagine leaving.