Latest news with #AthertonTablelands
ABC News
14 hours ago
- Health
- ABC News
How creative writing can aid healing process to create happy ending
Renee Hayes was leading an "ordinary" suburban life when a back injury up-ended her plans, rendering her bed-bound. "I was an active 30-year-old who went from having a busy life to being stuck in bed for [six] months," she said. She had been working in a dental surgery in the Atherton Tablelands when one morning she woke in excruciating pain after a disc burst in her back. She tried countless options to manage the constant, chronic pain, but was ultimately unable to move or work, and the sudden changes in her life made it difficult to cope. "Anyone who has been in chronic pain knows it is incessant and it's very hard to escape from," she said. Hayes eventually found an escape in the written word. Initially, without a laptop, Hayes hand-wrote the first draft of her self-published fantasy trilogy, the Rim Walker series, while flat on her back. "After being stagnant for so long trying to heal, it felt like a gift and that I hadn't wasted that time," she said, reflecting on how writing gave her a fresh start. Now a published author of three novels, Hayes credits the creative writing process as a therapeutic outlet that allowed her to find joy again, despite the pain. "It helped me through an incredibly tough time mentally and physically and I no longer felt like I'd lost anything or life was punishing me." Creative writing expert Edwina Shaw isn't surprised. The writer, educator and tutor in the University of Queensland's creative writing department said the therapeutic benefits of writing went far beyond the stereotypical journalling exercise. "It's about using the craft of writing to create something beautiful from the pain, trauma or loss someone has suffered," she said. She said research had shown that the process of handwriting was very calming on the body and a subduer of our stress systems, while creativity was "a natural calmer of the vagus nerve". She said writing could help to avoid internalising powerful emotions such as anger, which was associated with experiences of grief or trauma. "We need to separate ourselves from what's happening in our lives and reframe the way we think about it," she said. "Creative writing can help us do that, whether writing a poem, a song, a novel or even writing comedy." That was singer-songwriter Greta Stanley's experience when she lost her home and contents in the December 2023 flood that ripped through Far North Queensland. "Songwriting was a big part of my healing process, 100 per cent," Stanley said. At the time, she felt lost, anxious and completely overwhelmed, was trying to manage a debilitating autoimmune disease and write her third album. Stanley said she tried meditation, reiki healing, a therapist and even a visit to a psychic to help her manage her mental health and chronic pain, but songwriting was the most cathartic outlet. Stanley, 27, said using the lyrics as a tool to express herself on the album about navigating mental health gave her hope. "The album has definitely been my way of putting all the noise and stuff going on in my head, into something that makes sense for me." But creative writing expert Ms Shaw said the writing did not have to be an autobiographical piece to be effective, and acknowledged that for some, that would be too confronting. "Sometimes life is too close or too hard to write about it as yourself, so you can invent a character … and give your experience to someone else … change the ending." Canberra-based widow Emma Grey took that approach in her novel after the death of her husband Jeff. "I found incredible comfort in writing about grief and it was a very cathartic process for me." She said using writing to navigate the trauma of losing her husband allowed her to manage the myriad of feelings that would creep up, often without warning, and channel them into something "useful". The Last Love Note, her novel written while grieving, sold more than 100,000 copies in the United States alone, becoming a beacon of hope for many who had lost loved ones, Grey said. "I have since been inundated with messages from around the world from readers sharing their stories of loss and how my novel helped them through tough times," she said.
ABC News
3 days ago
- General
- ABC News
First Nations firefighters changing culture on the Queensland fire line
When Arlene Clubb and her relatives joined their local volunteer fire brigade in rural Queensland a decade ago, they were not entirely welcomed with open arms. "People didn't want us there because we were Indigenous people," the Kuku-Thaypan, Kuku Yalanji and Kuku-Possum woman said. "[Some members] in a photo, they turned their backs on us, they didn't want to be in the same photo as us and it just sort of made us feel no good. "But we didn't let that faze us. If you let people like that affect you, you're not going to go anywhere." The reception some gave the Clubb family at the Tinaroo Rural Fire Brigade in the state's far north belied the efforts of first officer and founding member Les Green, who went out of his way to encourage the Wadjanbarra Yidinji traditional owners to join in the first place. It started with a conversation about the need to manage a piece of the Atherton Tablelands of great importance to traditional owners. Arlene's sister-in-law Kylee Clubb, who also signed up, is now the Tinaroo brigade's second officer, working to drive cultural change in fire management more broadly. "[We] thought about what we wanted to do as a family and what we wanted to do as First Nations people, especially on the lands we've been on up there on the Tablelands," she said. Kylee said the growing number of First Nations firefighters was leading to a greater appreciation within agencies of the importance of cultural burning. The practice involves using small fires to benefit the ecology and encourage plant growth, rather than a simple focus on reducing fuel loads. But the best time for a cultural burn on the Atherton Tablelands — an ancient landscape shaped by volcanic activity millions of years ago — might clash with statewide fire bans or burning schedules decided elsewhere in the state. Kylee said the "conversation is being started" about moving away from strict burn schedules, to better include Indigenous knowledge of landscapes. "At the moment, we've seen heaps of lantana, heaps of different weeds, sicklepods just overtake the forest," she said. "[It's about] paying attention to what's flowering and what's seasonal. "The seeds we have out here need activation from fire." Fire management agencies have shown an interest in investing in the leadership skills and expertise of their First Nations personnel too. When the Queensland Fire Department was looking for female firefighters to attend an Indigenous-focused intensive training exchange program in the United States three years ago, Kylee was one of those asked to go. She and fellow Far North Queenslanders Chloe Sweeney and Alex Lacy found the experience so rewarding, they decided to organise their own version of Women-in-Fire Training Exchange, or WTREX, on home soil. It ran over 12 days near Cairns last month, bringing together 40 fire practitioners from across Australia and overseas, most of whom were Indigenous women. One of those was Arlene, who said the growing presence of Indigenous women among the ranks of volunteer firefighters was about showing "we're not just mothers, not just caregivers, not just stay-at-home wives anymore". "[Dispossession] did stop a lot of our cultural burning but it never got lost — the mentality has always been there and all the knowledge we had from our elders is still there," she said. Lenya Quinn-Davidson, an expert on human connection to fire at the University of California, was one of the founders of WTREX in 2016. She took part in the recent Queensland program, and said it was important to offer Indigenous women a safe place to develop their skills and share knowledge so they could thrive in a traditionally "male-dominated, very militaristic" field. "The fire issues we have globally are so wicked, they're wicked problems, and we need diverse perspectives to solve them," she said. Megan Currell, an Australian-born member of the British Columbia Wildfire Service said a decade ago, "it felt like Canada was way ahead of Australia" when it came to relationships with Indigenous peoples. "When I come back and visit home, honestly, I see a massive improvement in the relationship and that cultural aspect, starting to get into cultural burns and being a support system for that and forming real partnerships," she said. "I'd say now they're starting to become neck-and-neck a bit or maybe even Australia is starting to take over."
Daily Mail
7 days ago
- General
- Daily Mail
Urgent manhunt for heavily tattooed prison inmate who escaped on a tractor two days ago
A manhunt is underway for an inmate who escaped a prison farm on a tractor. Michael Graeme Rennie, 43, was last seen using the machinery while working at Lotus Glen Low Custody Correctional Centre in far north Queensland. Rennie likely left the farm on a red tractor on Sunday morning, Detective Inspector Jason Chetham said. 'I haven't heard that one before,' he told reporters on Monday. 'There have obviously been prisoners abscond from the corrections centre up there in the past but I don't think anyone's left on a tractor.' Police are on the lookout for the heavily tattooed Rennie who is serving more than six years for motor vehicle, weapon, drug and other offences including serious assault, theft and burglary. Police have released a photo of Rennie and the tractor he was using when he escaped the Atherton Tablelands prison farm near Cairns on Sunday. 'The Tablelands is an agricultural centre so tractors on the road I don't think are something that would turn a lot of heads, but we're keen to find it anyway,' Det Insp Chetham said. Rennie is described as Caucasian and 174cm tall, with blue eyes and fair hair. He has multiple tattoos across his body including a gun on his left shoulder, a demon holding a skull with horns on his left arm, a full sleeve on his right arm. Rennie also has multiple dog bites and scars on his left arm, police said. He was from the state's far north and there had been a 'number of sightings' of the tractor, Det Insp Chetham said. 'We don't have specific concerns about what he might do in the community ... but we certainly ask people not to approach him and to call us immediately if they have any information,' he said. A 28-year-old man serving two years for break-and-enter offences escaped from the prison farm in February 2023, and was arrested three days later.
