‘From the top of the mountain, all the water was coming down our creek, a landslide, there was a whole boulder coming down,’ a child’s voice is heard saying.
‘It was like a miniature tsunami,’ another child says, ‘with brown water just powering through the trees’.
‘I just kept on thinking, like, what if the walls came down and just crashed down on us?’ a third child says.
No child is reported to have suffered serious physical injury in the floods and landslides that devastated the Byron Shire hinterland and beyond in early 2022.
But the experience was ‘really scary’, as one child says, and likely unforgettable.
Young legends: flood stories of Main Arm is a podcast trilogy capturing stories of child disaster survivors in Main Arm and Upper Main Arm, in the hills behind Mullumbimby.
It’s ‘definitely difficult for me to hear some of the things they’re saying,’ assistant principal, and year five and six teacher, Christian Tranberg, says at a class listening party for episode one, ‘and really beautiful to hear some of the other things they’re saying and to see the humour’.
Big emotions hidden with laughter, says teacher
‘I could see how much difference that has made to them, to have that opportunity to express themselves,’ Mr Tranberg says.
Around 50 students participated in the 18-month project, produced with thanks to combined funding from the NSW Office of Regional Youth and Community Broadcasting Foundation.
Listening back for the first time in their freshly furnished classroom, the students laugh at memories of being allowed to watch lots of movies, while adults frantically prepared makeshift spaces for the school after it was largely destroyed.
References to beloved pets also evoke laughter.
Mr T, as Mr Tranberg is known affectionally at the school, says the laughter is sometimes ‘to hide how big those emotions were,’ and his voice catches.
He says he wasn’t privy to the interviews as they happened and it was important for the students to feel like they had a safe space to talk.
‘And to say it in front of their friends,’ Mr T says, ‘to hear the experiences that their friends had [but] had never told them because everything happened so fast’.
Trio of community radio producers unite to record history in making
Podcast co-producer, Lealah Shostak, was born and raised in Main Arm, and has fond memories of attending the tiny local school.
‘I work at the Byron Youth Service [BYS],’ Ms Shostak says, ‘we did two days of radio programming, different activities and recording, like a recovery response when the school was not actually in the school and it was completely shut down in the three weeks following the initial floods, so that’s how it kind of was born’.’
Interviews happened in groups of five students, with children allowed to ask one another questions.
‘I made sure to end each conversation with a positive or strength-based question,’ the youth worker says, ‘so you’re really focusing on not so much that trauma reliving but learning experiences’.
Ms Shostak and the BYS also facilitate youth radio project YAC Radio, broadcast and streamed via Bay FM Community Radio every Thursday afternoon, enabling her to turn to longtime local community radio producer Rasela Torise for help creating the podcast.
Ms Torise seized the chance to expand the project’s potential by including her mentee, local high school student Monet Shortland, as the presenter.
‘I couldn’t think of a better way to present the podcast than to involve another young person,’ Ms Torise says, ‘and to not only use her voice, but to actually train and teach her how to create the podcast as we’re going along’.
Children’s resilience inspiring
Monet’s enthusiasm and appreciation of her inclusion is obvious thanks to her constant smile as she talks, and it seems her joy is reflective of all children involved.
‘They had fun, they loved being interviewed,’ Monet says, ‘they loved being on the radio and listening to the final part of the podcast’.
‘They really took everything very calmly and they weren’t too struck by it to their heart,’ Monet says.
All three producers say they’re inspired by the children’s response to the disasters.
‘The way that they can laugh at their stories, the way that they hold each other in their stories and listen to each other, I feel like you can hear all of that in the podcast as well,’ Ms Shostak says.
‘I hope that as a community, we can look to young people also as teachers when it comes to building resilience.’
Young legends: flood stories of Main Arm can be heard via bayfm.org.
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