Sophia Watt was recently awarded Lismore Citizen of the Year for her charity work in providing food for flood affected community members. She sat with Sara Browne at her kitchen table to talk about food, family, floods and how a grandmother can influence your life.

I’ve been in Lismore for 15 years. A relationship brought me here. We still don’t live together. I was a long-term single mum and I am used to my own rules, my own space, so we’ve just continued on with our family as it is. We have our own way of doing it.

I was born and bred in Murwillumbah. I moved to Tweed for a few years and then I moved back when I was due to have my daughter because all my family were still in Murwillumbah. I’ve been on my own with her since she was 10 weeks old.

I like it here. Its bigger than Murwillumbah but you don’t know everybody and that’s a good thing. When you live in a small town like Murwillumbah, everybody knows everybody and I felt like everything was always reported back to my parents. It means I can be my own person rather than having to live up to my parents standards.

I did a bit of cooking after the 2017 floods. There was a bit of a call out for meals to be dropped over to the centre that was at the train station. So, I would cook meals and someone would drop them there for people to pick up.

So much more of Lismore was affected this time around. I started on a small scale. I was on my own in my own kitchen. As you can see, its not very big. Originally it started with a call out from the hospital needing meals for staff that were stuck there. Plus I had a few friends that were flood affected that had special needs kids that needed nuggets and chips, not the normal meals that everybody else would provide. Because I have special needs kids of my own, I totally understand that so I just catered to what was needed.

To start with I was funding it myself but that didn’t last very long because people came out of the woodwork donating gift cards to help with expenses. Obviously it was a pretty small budget but a couple of months in, ARC (Animal Rescue Cooperative) came on board. I had already been dealing with one of their volunteers getting dog food dropped to me because I had two flood affected dogs here with us. I was texting her and she was dropping stuff here as we needed it. You can imagine having four dogs in the house, we were going through lots of food.

Then she messaged me on social media asking for some meals for another family she was supporting. When I gave her the address she realised it was the same person, me. Next thing you know, the president of ARC was ringing me saying ‘we’re coming onboard.’

To start with, I did all the shopping myself. Because I had such a limited budget, I had to shop for specials. Once ARC came onboard I gave them a list of what I wanted and they had the groceries delivered to me.

Initially I advertised on facebook for people to deliver the meals and got different people all the time. But as the list got bigger, I connected with Jeffrey and Susan and they agreed to do delivery regularly and more long-term. ARC helped them with petrol so they weren’t out of pocket. I had another lady who came here and started helping me and then she started cooking from her own kitchen as well. At our peak, we were doing about 1400 meals a week.

It was a lot of work. My kids therapies and things were affected by the floods as well so everything was either cancelled or moved online so I was at home with nothing else really to do so I just kept cooking. And it just kept getting bigger. We didn’t actually finish up until Christmas week. I did have to take a week off here and there because we lost a few family members during the year. It was a bit of a rough year.

I’m really glad that I did it because the skills that I’ve used are skills that I learnt from my grandmother. I’ve never worked as a cook or a chef. I grew up in my grandmother’s kitchen. My mum went back to work when I was only little so I was there for everything. She was always prepared for unexpected visitors. There was always stews and casseroles and scones in the freezer ready for her to pull out and offer somebody a meal. I take after her. She was one of our family members that passed away during last year. She had a big impact.

I can see the difference in connection that my kids have with their grandparents to what I had. A lot of my life we lived next door to her so we were always together. If mum and dad were at work we just went over to nan and pa’s after school and that kind of thing.

I have two brothers. They were connected to our grandmother too but not quite as significantly as me because I was the eldest. By the time the boys were born, because there was three of us, we actually had a babysitter that would come and help. Nan’s death probably affected all of us more so than our cousins because we had that relationship.

I’m fairly sure she was mostly a full-time parent as a career. She was my grandfather’s carer from when he was in his early fifties because he’d had two strokes by then. So, she was always at home really, for most of my life. I have an uncle that’s only four years older so he’s more like my brother than he is my uncle. Nan taught us all a lot and yes, we had different relationships, but because I loved to cook, I was always on the kitchen bench helping.

The feedback that I’ve gotten while doing this has been that providing a warm meal showed that someone still cared. That’s the thing that stuck with me. To me it was such a small thing but to the people that were receiving the meals, it was the difference between them eating or not eating. A lot of the people that we were supporting were still living over in their homes that are still shells. They couldn’t make their own meals.

Over time I managed to develop a few connections. I met a lady called Jasie from Brisbane and she donated me my first freezer to help with the overflow because I just didn’t have enough room to keep up with everything. She put her feelers out and raised money for goods. The first time, she came down with a really big trailer. Then I connected her with people and she brought down slippers and blankets and dressing gowns and took them directly to the people that I’d linked her with.

Along the way I also met a lady called Bettina. She had friends in Brisbane and the Gold Coast that were collecting donations then they’d come down and create a register of who needed what and link everybody. All social media connections. The only mainstream media that I’ve had any dealings with is ‘The Project’ (Network Ten show). Lisa Wilkinson came out and did an interview. I was nervous. I’m not really one that likes the spotlight but at that point I felt that Lismore was starting to be forgotten. I was a little bit disappointed at the time, that it was portrayed in a way that suited what they wanted rather than what was needed. It was around May/June last year.

One of the things that Lisa said during the program was about ‘truck loads of money’ and they didn’t give context into saying anything like ‘truck loads of money has been promised but nothing has actually arrived.’ People came back to me and said they felt like everyone else in Australia was led to believe they’d been given lots of money and they’re not struggling.

In saying that, I felt it was a way to get Lismore back into the media. People started talking about it again. I suppose from that perspective it did get the town back into view but I don’t think it was visible enough in the way that was needed. It was made out like everyone here thinks that its bigger than it really is. People have got no idea. If you drive through the main part of town, every third shop is open but that’s far from normal. Even as early as August I had my mum saying ‘why are you still cooking?’ and I said ‘mum you do realise that there is people still living in tents?’.

Sophia, centre, with tv presenter Lisa Wilkinson left, and another home kitchen charity cook Carolyn Flood

It got to the point where I needed to slow down because my health was going downhill probably from about November, I have chronic health issues myself. I think because I put all our grief on the backburner, it all just caught up with me.

ARC came up with ‘Sophia’s Kitchen’ when they came onboard last year so they could get the advertising out there. The donation link was on the signage and all of that. They did stickers up that I could put on the containers so people knew where stuff was coming from. The menu changed every week. I learnt to use slow cookers. I had five of them that I would set at night time.

I’d make sweet and sours or curries or pasta, all those kind of foods that warm you up in winter. You can imagine living in a tent when it’s the middle of winter. It’s only ever been here in my kitchen and the other lady that started cooking in her kitchen. I did have another lady that was based in Lennox Head that came onboard when I had to take some time off. My local ARC support person and my delivery team were trying to cover the cooking while I needed to step away to go and say goodbye to my grandmother. Jackie joined us then. She was cooking at her home in Lennox and came up and take the pressure off once a week.

Both my boys are autistic. To a degree I think they felt like maybe I wasn’t putting enough focus on them. Even my adult daughter felt that way but she’s really proud now and she got super excited that I won the Australian Citizen award.

That was not something I ever set out to do. A few people nominated me, from what I can gather. I had a couple of people that I didn’t know message me for contact details relating to a nomination. Then Bettina that I mentioned earlier, I know that she put in a nomination. I was nominated in two different categories – services in community for individual and citizen of the year. I was surprised. I did it because I saw a need. I didn’t do it to win anything or to make a big name for myself or anything like that. I just did it because people needed food.

I think you give what you get and because my grandmother was such a giving person, I took after her. Even before all this, I’m the first person to grab a few groceries and give it to someone if I know they’re struggling. It’s something that I’ve always done, I’d just never done it on such a big scale.

My life is pretty busy as it is, juggling all the kids needs and other family members needs. I have family that have health issues, I manage their NDIS stuff. I think this year I’ll be focussing on my own family and meeting their needs, especially with my youngest, he’s in his last year of primary school. I need to get him ready for high school.

If the hours the kids are at school count, then yes I do get time to myself. I used to love playing bingo but sadly the club is still not up and running yet – the Workers Club. They were running it on the days I was flexible enough to get there. That was probably another reason I got cooking and kept busy because I didn’t have those usual outlets.

This year will be busy enough with a preteen and a teenager and three dogs. We had extra people here during the flood, some family friends who lost everything. They stayed here then they were put in temporary accommodation because they were told it would get them a house sooner if they didn’t have somewhere stable to stay.

I can’t see myself moving on from Lismore. My kids are settled here. Having kids with additional needs, they need stability, unless we needed to move for one of them.

I love the sense of community. I love how everyone steps up and does whatever they can do to help the person next door. Whether it be cleaning up the yard or hosing the mud out of their houses. I got in and did cooking but everyone seemed to step up and do whatever they were capable of doing and I think that is what sets Lismore apart from other communities. We all seem to have each other’s back.