Shine Awards 2022: Lismore flood recovery volunteer Naomi Moran wins spirit category

A woman behind Koori Mail’s grassroots flood-recovery hub is the winner of this year’s Shine Award for Spirit. Meet the finalists.

The Weekly Times 2022 Shine Award for Spirit goes to a rural woman whose sheer personality shines through. One of six categories in the awards that celebrate Australia’s rural women, Spirit honours women who make a difference in their community by just being who they are.

This year’s winner is Bundjalung and Dunghutti woman Naomi Moran, who has been praised for her selfless effort spearheading the Koori Mail flood recovery hub in the aftermath of the disaster that hit northern NSW in February this year. Finalists are Nerissa Cooksey from Woodburn, NSW, and Jackie Peacock from Hamilton, Victoria. Read their stories:

2022 SPIRIT WINNER: NAOMI MORAN

Koori Mail flood recovery hub co-ordinator, Lismore, NSW

General manager of the Koori Mail Naomi Moran in her old office in Lismore. Months on from the flood, the building remains a construction zone. Picture: Elise Derwin

In the nine months since catastrophic floods swept NSW’s Northern Rivers into a nightmare, Naomi Moran hasn’t stopped.

The strong Bundjalung and Dunghutti woman is general manager of national Indigenous newspaper the Koori Mail, and has been a driving force behind a central flood recovery support hub in Lismore.

In the immediate aftermath of the crisis, Naomi made the difficult decision to suspend publishing temporarily, which allowed her and her staff to throw their all into helping those who had lost everything.

“We have an amazing team and everyone has been on board since day dot,” she says. “It started with a 3x3 blue marquee, trestle table and a couple of fruit boxes and bread … with a sign saying Donations Welcome. It snowballed from there.

“We had so much support, not just locally and throughout the state, but nationwide.”

Under Naomi’s firm leadership, and with the support of her staff and community, the hub became a go-to headquarters for collecting and distributing food, supplies, tools, equipment and wellbeing support.

“We made a point of servicing our Indigenous communities first and foremost. Then we were able to service the entire region and we are still doing that months later.”

Responding to Koori Mail’s public appeals for help, donations and volunteers poured in.

Naomi and her team co-ordinated efforts to reach communities that had been cut off from outside help.

“Our flood-relief centre happened really organically,” she says. “I talk about working down the line, that meant we were listening every day to the needs of the community.”

They had volunteers on the ground just days after the event, and they continued to work around the clock for weeks.

As time passed, the community’s needs changed and the Koori Mail responded.

“In those immediate days, it was absolutely about food, water, supplies,” she says. “As we went on, it was cleaning products, cleaning equipment.”

Soon they realised people were under huge emotional and mental stress, so they reached out to doctors, counsellors and nurses, who volunteered their time at the hub. Nearly eight months later, they are still on-site offering support.

The local soup kitchen was also wiped out, and the need for fresh hot cooked meals skyrocketed.

“Not just for those that would go to the soup kitchen normally – but those hit by the floods and the volunteers,” Naomi says.

So they set up the Koori Kitchen, which still pumps out hundreds of meals a week for people in the community.

“We are doing it the old way,” she says. “This isn’t about databases and tech. This is about deep listening, writing it down in a notebook and taking immediate action. Our role here is to listen and listen deeply and take our knowledge from the community.”

For her fearless leadership and immense effort to help her community during their greatest time of need, Naomi Moran is the inspiring winner of the Shine Award for Spirit.

Launched in 2017, The Weekly Times Shine Awards, supported by Harvey Norman, celebrates the contributions of Australia’s rural and regional women.

This year, 120 nominations were received for rural women in every state and territory.

Finalists were announced last week and today winners have been revealed in six categories: Belief, Courage, Dedication, Grace, Passion and Spirit.

Meet the other finalists in the Spirit Category.

SPIRIT FINALIST: NERISSA COOKSEY

Feed for Friends founder, Woodburn, NSW

Founder of Feed for Friends group Nerissa Cooksey. Picture: Elise Derwin

Nerissa Cooksey was devastated for her community after torrential rain fell across northern NSW in February this year, turning the Richmond Valley into an inland sea.

The 31-year-old vet nurse’s Woodburn house was spared in the floods, and her horses and dogs were safe.

But she was mortified the day after the February 28 crisis when social media was awash with pleas from desperate people stranded in nearby Coraki and Bungawalbin.

“Monday morning I woke up to all the horrible Facebook posts of everyone suffering,” Nerissa says. “We just felt so guilty that we were OK and so many we cared for weren’t.”

Nerissa jumped into action, creating a social media group called Feed for Friends, where locals could let others know what they needed.

“My father himself, he lost his house. And some of my best friends. Even some of the people assisting us as volunteers had lost everything,” she says.

Since that first dreadful day, when her partner, Kale Biggs, and his brothers rescued their mate and his three dogs by boat, Nerissa and Feed for Friends has become a main point of contact for local flood-affected landholders.

“We started delivering essentials to as many people as we could, and I just became a hotline. People were ringing me from left, right and centre asking if I could go help,” she says. “We are talking about people who have lost everything, including the clothes off their backs.”

While she fielded calls and organised volunteers for rescue missions, Nerissa is adamant Feed for Friends has been a huge group effort.

“There were a lot of people who shined,” she says.

Up to six boat owners, including her partner, Kale, Brady Battise, Corey Clarke and Scott Johns, retrieved people and animals off roofs, at times running huge operations to ferry out large stock including horses and cows. They braved swollen rivers littered with dead livestock to reach stranded families.

“We would turn up and people hadn’t seen people for days,” Nerissa says. “All they wanted to do was have a chat and tell their story. We became like counsellors.”

Eventually when emergency services including police and SES could access the area, they worked directly with Feed for Friends to determine where to focus their support efforts.

As water receded, Nerissa co-ordinated storage and delivery of an influx of donated hay and animal feed. She did feed drop-offs herself because residents’ vehicles had been destroyed, all the while with her son Huxley, now 2, on her hip.

Sally Power volunteered with the group as a logistics co-ordinator, and says Nerissa’s bravery and dedication made Feed for Friends an effective grassroots recovery organisation.

Nerissa says it felt good giving back to the community after they had received so much support when Kale was diagnosed with cancer on the day their son, Huxley, was born.

“We had the community really behind us,” she says. “It felt really good to be able to give back after getting that assistance.”

SPIRIT FINALIST: JACKIE PEACOCK

Marketer and mental health advocate, Hamilton, Victoria

Jackie Peacock rode the Finke Desert Race to raise funds for Beyond Blue. Picture: Nicole Cleary

Jackie Peacock has more grit than most.

The marketing consultant from Hamilton, Victoria, is an amateur motorcycle rider who has tackled some of Australia’s most gruelling desert courses, including the 460km Finke Desert Race, to break down the stigma surrounding mental health.

“I’ve had a lot of mental health struggles throughout my life,” says the 41-year-old. “I wanted to show people that it is OK. It is quite normal to struggle. And it is nothing to be ashamed of.”

Jackie raised more than $20,000 for Beyond Blue by taking part last year in the epic two-day return ride from Alice Springs to Aputula. She says it was a huge personal achievement because she helped normalise conversations about mental-health struggles.

“I didn’t realise how many people struggle with mental health until I did that fundraiser,” Jackie says.

Growing up in the tiny town of Logan, near St Arnaud, Jackie had a “great childhood” racing around on motorbikes with her brothers on her family’s eight hectares, where they ran a gold mine gravel pit.

When she was 14, her perfect world shattered.

“Dad was 46. He had a sudden heart attack,” she says. “My mum and I were there at the time when it happened, and we tried to save him. But we couldn’t do anything.

“A lot of my life I have blamed myself for that. And felt a lot of guilt.”

Struggling with low self-esteem for years, Jackie eventually sought help from psychologists. She says they gave her coping strategies, but it takes constant effort to “keep on top of it”.

“With mental health, it is not something that you fix,” she says. “I have to keep working at it.”

Despite having more than 20 years of graphic design experience and running her own successful business, Jackie says her self-doubt still rears its head. It is also sometimes made worse by the fact she chooses to live rurally.

A former employer once told her she was worth “30 per cent less” than an equally skilled worker in the city, simply because of her location.

“People who work in the country really need to value themselves … there is the stigma that we’re not worth as much as people in the city. It is not true,” she says.

Jackie says she owes a lot to the motorbike community, so it was a pleasure to give back through raising funds and awareness for Beyond Blue.

“Riding has made me push myself and realise that I am a strong person,” she says.