High above Lismore’s centre sits the history of the northern rivers region of New South Wales, hidden inside shipping containers.
These metal boxes aren’t temperature or moisture controlled, nor are they open to the public. But their elevation is letting the city’s museum director, Robert Smith, sleep a little easier.
“I used to have nightmares about the containers holding much of the northern rivers heritage floating away down the Wilson River,” Smith says.
“Now the containers are in a very high spot, well out of reach. Even a Noah’s Ark-type flood would be hard to reach this place.”
The historical artefacts – including furniture and clothing, paper records and an extensive First Nations collection – were spared from the mud when the floods tore through the lower levels of the Lismore Regional Museum about a year ago.
But the damp and the mould found them quickly, climbing the stairs along the carpet.
Once the focus of rescue efforts shifted from lives and homes about a week after the inundation, the contents of the volunteer-run museum were transferred to 10 shipping containers in the car park.
But a few months later, heavy rains returned. Smith worried about losing all the pieces if the town’s levee couldn’t hold the water back.
So now they sit on a hill, where a thorough recovery process has begun.
‘It’s deeply sad’
Nearly every day, Ted Trudgeon and other volunteers can be found at the site assessing objects and treating them with a de-moulding vinegar solution.
“We’re working on the items four days a week and teams of volunteers have never been more active for us,” Smith says.
“That’s the future as far as we can see it, until some suitable premises become available.”
Their old space is still vacant and gutted. It’ll be updated with more flood-friendly materials eventually, much like the nearby Lismore regional gallery, which lost more than a third of its 1,400 works in the floods.
Gallery director, Ashleigh Ralph, and its curator, Kezia Geddes, hope about 40% of the works will be restored, while most of the photograph collection will be reprinted.
The town’s beloved Hannah Cabinet has also been taken away for work by master craftsmen with the goal of a complete restoration, although it will take a few years.
A week after the floods “wiped out the entire gallery”, specialist conservators joined efforts to retrieve what could be saved.
“We followed the flood plan, which is to move everything to the highest floor and above the 100-year flood level, but that wasn’t enough,” Ralph says.
“We had to move all of the debris out before we could even reach the artwork.
“My team did an amazing job holding it together … your whole city has been wiped out, all your friends and family are in trouble, and then my team is showing up to work every day – not because they had to but because they wanted to ensure that we saved the work.”
They relied on volunteer art handlers to get the works out. They were rushed into cold storage and sent around the country for restoration.
In the meantime, a pop-up gallery has opened up in the centre of town to an emotional reception.
“I’m just trying to look on the positive side,” Ralph says.
“It’s really hard and it’s hard to reflect 12 months later. It’s deeply sad.”
New plans for future flooding emergencies are now in place. Instead of being taken to the second floor of the gallery, all works will be moved out during another emergency.
Insurance policy
Museums and Galleries of NSW wants more to be done to protect cultural institutions from natural disasters.
In a recent submission to the federal government’s committee on disaster resilience, the organisation recommended the establishment of a national fund, managed at a state level, to respond more quickly during major weather events.
It also wants to see the creation of a national insurance scheme to cover the collections at smaller organisations, like the Eugowra museum and bushranger centre that was almost destroyed by floods in November.
Almost the entire collection in Eugowra was found covered in a layer of “silt and sludge” once the waters receded, museum project consultant Hayley Lavers says.
“There were a few photos and portraits which were on the wall which were saved and a couple of things which are high on bookshelves … 99% of the collection was damaged,” she says.
She is trying to make a plan for the space into the future, but they have neither the insurance, nor the money for storage.
“They may look at getting funding to put some storage in, but then you’ve got to look [at] how high do you put the storage and then how that’s accessed by an older population,” she says.
The head of Museums and Galleries of NSW, Brett Adlington, says insurance is often not an option fo volunteer-run organisations.
“If you can get stuff into a freezer as soon as possible, then that’s going to ensure that there’s a better likelihood of that material being saved,” he says.
He wants to see governments – state and federal – consider establishing offsite storage facilities for groups to share.
“We need to be really mindful that we’re not taking stories away from places by continually putting that heritage into potentially damaging situations,” he says.
“This is the new reality. We really need to be doing all we can to make sure that that part of our story is preserved.”
But in Lismore, a year on from the floods, Smith is just focusing on the shipping containers on a hill, and the treasures they hold.
“There are people in Lismore who’ve lost everything,” he says.
“I’m not wanting to grandstand about our issues or get too emotional or demanding about it, but I know the place of heritage and culture, it’s important to a community in the long term so quietly we do our own job to preserve it as best we can.”
