The Canberra community was impacted when fires tore through the region 20 years ago, homes were destroyed, lives were lost, and people remain affected to this day. Local artist, author and educator, Barbie Robinson, and now South Coast resident artist, Ian Robertson, created Phoenix and Ralph as an object of community memory.

Collaborating for the third time with their newest picture book, the author and artist drew from their own experiences and that of the community, also touching on the 2019/20 Australia-wide fires and climate change. But ultimately, the author says, it is a story of hopefulness because the birds returning reminds us of our resilience.

“I wanted to write the story because of the anniversary and I had the experience to share. I do think it’s important that children have happy books and bright books, but children are capable of processing much more than that,” says Robinson.

Ralph and Phoenix are magpies, a symbol of hope, according to Robinson. After the fire had passed in 2003, she says the birds returned almost immediately, along with many that had lost their nests. However, the 2019/20 event was different.

“People were talking about birds falling out of the sky and all the wildlife down the South Coast just being wiped out, millions of animals.  It’s taken a long time to feel like there were a lot of birds around again,” she says.

Told through both the images and the words, together and apart, Mr Roberston used Robinson’s photos for reference, along with his own memories. The illustrator was a counsellor in Canberra at the time and helped residents in the aftermath. Robinson says there are some details in Robertson’s painting that have no words in the book.

The author believes children don’t necessarily need to be shielded from darkness, rather there should be an open communication about why things are dark. Picture books offer a tool for conversation, Robinson herself has been expanding her collection throughout her adult years. Recommending her new book for children in grade three and above, she says it could be shared with younger children.

“How important it is for children to read, for them to have visual literacy and textual literacy and what a powerful thing a book is,” smiles Robinson.

Through her podcast program with her organisation Living Arts Canberra, Robinson has seen firsthand the stories that children are wanting to share. 

“The sorts of stories they wanted to tell were about homelessness, domestic violence, plastics in the sea, recycling, and climate change,” she says.

Darkness in this book looks like the despair and destruction caused by the flames, however, there is light in the aftermath with neighbours helping each other. Robinson feels she is always writing about grief, loss, intimacy, and resilience in her stories.

Impacted by the world around her, she says friends had become homeless, other trying to decide whether their heart could take rebuilding, and then with all the other public stories, it felt overwhelming.

“I think that we feel for other people who’ve been directly affected, but we’re all affected by the things that are happening with our climate. So, as a writer or a teller of stories, this is what I can do,” she says.

Robinson says she almost feels like a bit of a fraud because they lost nothing of their own. She remembers the day clearly; she was about to open her first solo photographic exhibition at the Tuggeranong Arts Centre and her eldest son was starting his first job at the cafe at Stromlo. As the day went on, the sky grew darker and darker.

“My husband set out preparing our house to try and make it as fireproof as possible if the fires we could see down the valley came up our way. I was just mesmerised by the visual that I could see across the Brindabellas, everything was red, orange and black and at three in the afternoon it was like night,” she says.

Her son was sent home, soon they were scrambling to get their personal belongings into the car. With the dog parked in one and the cat in the other, the family was ready to go. However, the fire passed them by, cutting across Mount Taylor and onto Farrer Ridge.

“It was surreal and fast and noisy, that microclimate created by fire of that intensity, and we were all a bit stunned, I think. Our neighbours all gathered around to put out spot fires.”

She says locals had to relive the trauma they felt when the Black Summer fires hit in 2019, smoke enveloped the region, suffocating the gardens and residents.

“We’re getting about with masks on, gas masks on, even in the house. I think it brought that back for everybody, it’s a sort of deep, quiet trauma and then all around Australia this happened.”

Items of history with experiences from members of the community are important for future generations to be able to understand why things have happened and what led us down the path we will go.

“I think it’s important in our social history that we have records of these things, different sorts of records, and it’s personal history as well for so many people,” Robinson says.

Phoenix & Ralph by Barbie Robinson and Ian Robertson hits the shelves from 2 March.

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