The 2019 black summer fires laid many things bare in the shire of Bellingen and among them were the gaps in access to reliable information.
Many in the pretty shire of 12,600 on the New South Wales mid-north coast were left feeling vulnerable so the local housing group turned its attention to the need for some sort of network to provide greater support when the next disaster struck.
It was partly inspired by the Mutual Aid network in the UK, which brought neighbours together and identified who was vulnerable in the early days of Covid-19. That model was reimagined and the Bellingen shire’s own not-for-profit Neighbourhood Care Network was born.
The NCN was designed with bushfires and floods in mind, to send out emergency information through hyperlocal networks of neighbours. As it turned out, the next disaster was Covid and it hit within months.
“We were all watching the pandemic numbers rise internationally, it was scary,” says NCN’s chair, Kerry Pearse. “When Covid actually arrived [in Australia], the shire council created its pandemic response group and we pitched the idea of the NCN to them.”
Funding from the council’s $1.5m federal government bushfire recovery grant enabled a shire-wide letterbox drop by local residents and, together with stories in the local newspaper, word spread.
Within six weeks 660 people had registered, leading to 54 local groups with 88 coordinators.
“It all happened so fast – it was incredible the way people put their hands up offering to help,” Pearse says.
From the council’s point of view, the NCN dovetailed perfectly with what it was trying to achieve in resilience and collaboration. Its pandemic response group began in March 2020 as a “precautionary alliance” between community sectors.
“We included pharmacies, doctors, neighbourhood centres and the chambers of commerce – the NCN fitted the mix well,” says the shire’s general manager, Liz Jeremy. “After the first Covid wave that group went dormant but since the second Delta wave hit in June this year, it’s been active in a big way.”
Then, in March 2021, Australian Community Media closed the 130-year-old local newspaper, the Bellingen Courier Sun, leaving the NCN as a key source of trustworthy communication.
“We want to protect the community but you can’t tell people what to do, so we need to offer them solid information – the NCN addresses both the immediate need for that as well as creating disaster resilience,” Jeremy says.
That “dormant period” between the Covid waves was however a busy one for the nascent NCN.
Progress was made on developing community networks and communication mechanisms, the group incorporated and software was put in place for easy access to data. A broader approach, focusing on “neighbours helping neighbours” during and between emergencies, was developed.
“The idea is that groups will develop local communication action plans,” Pearse says. “It’s these plans that will ensure the support network is there if internet systems go down. It’s a blueprint we believe can be replicated anywhere.”
When the call went out for volunteer coordinators, Bruce Naylor was among those who signed up.
A community development worker at the Bellingen Neighbourhood Centre, he describes the NCN as a “knockout idea”.
“I was involved in a resilience program and the facilitator for a group in the Kalang Valley,” he says. “All our discussions came back to the need for a hyper-local community network … the NCN is just that, so I thought I’d put myself in the bucket line.”
When March delivered a flood, coinciding with the closure of the paper, the NCN was primed to step into the information void. Almost immediately text messages were sent out about road closures – specifically about the Waterfall Way, the shire’s main artery, which had been blocked by landslides.
By the end of June the texts offered information about mandatory mask wearing and QR codes as Covid returned. By early July they were daily, off the back of the NSW government’s 11am briefings, summarising the new rules, places of concern and lockdown alerts.
In September a total of 39,616 texts were sent to 902 people on the mid-north coast, from Woolgoolga to Dundurrabin to Stuarts Point, well beyond the shire’s boundaries.
Margaret Grice is the president of the local Country Women’s Assocation in the little coastal town of Urunga, 15km from Bellingen. She says that daily dose of information was, and continues to be, invaluable.
“The texts are regular and they are interpreted. They give us the good news first and then anything else of note … and if they get anything wrong, they retext with the correction. I’ve passed information on to so many people.”
For 82-year-old Bob Demkin, the texts offer updates, without the need to search or verify. “They’re doing a stellar job – one click and there’s the information, it’s easy and it’s not intimidating,” Demkin says.
This is not to say the loss of the local paper is not keenly felt. For Lynda Brenton, a resident of the shire for 35 years, the paper was a point of connection with the community, something she read from cover to cover every week.
“It was a constant and a comfort,” she says. “It was interesting and gave me a sense of the pulse of things. It was also intergenerational and accessible to everyone, without the need for electricity or a device of some sort.”
In Urunga, Jo Brotherton, who is standing for the council in 4 December elections, has heard many lamenting the paper’s loss.
“When it shut there was a total void, particularly for people who didn’t have the internet; the older members of the community really loved it,” she says.
That void is again highlighted as campaigns for the local elections gain momentum. Brotherton says getting information out has definitely been more of a challenge.
Meanwhile, with Covid easing, the NCN is shifting its focus back to the community groups – while continuing to fill the communication gap in the absence of a grassroots newspaper.
