In this section, we analyse the practices enacted by Waminda that were co-emergent and co-constitutive of their responses to the environmental and public health crises. The data analysis identified five dominant practice bundles [30] and themes in the Waminda responses:
-
Country-centred conception of local communities
-
Community-led: enabled by deep listening, response-ability and networking
-
Fluidity of boundaries
-
Caring: a sophisticated, collective, socio-material accomplishment
-
Organising practices: orientating situated actions and managing risks.
These practice bundles and themes were translated into visual images (Fig. 1) by some research participants, led by Aunty Lorraine Brown and Aunty Narelle Thomas, renowned artists from the Coomaditichie United Aboriginal Corporation. As Fig. 1 beautifually shows these practice bundles and themes are entangled, overlap and not easily seperable.
Aunty Lorraine Brown and Aunty Narelle Thomas explain:
The flower shapes, handprints and footprints represent community and the strength that brings community together in times of tragedies, loss, destruction and a fight against sickness [COVID pandemic], fires and floods. People working together to console, to care, to listen, to repair and to find the overpowering strength to continue on. The lines connect these communities together- the bold colours reflect- east coast saltwater people, communities and Country.
Country-centred conception of local communities
Waminda adopts a Country-centred conception of community connections and local communities that encompass the land, other-than-humans, humans, and the entangled relations amongst them. This ontological standpoint is threaded through all the practice bundles discussed in this paper. This inseparability of Country and community means practices such as connecting to Country, caring for Country after the bushfires and adopting a complex view of bushfire are key resources for healing body, mind, spirit, and heart's pain.
Connecting to Country spiritually, physically, affectively, and emotionally
The entanglement of personal and Country well-being is evident in an Aboriginal health practitioner's description of travelling down to Mogo after the fires.
That trip down the coast was the saddest trip that I've ever had in all my life. And I've been travelling down there since I was a kid. To see that much of the bush burned out. It was so so sad. And when I came to Mogo and seen the way it was burned and how it was affected, that first time I really cried. And to go down there now, it's so refreshing. I really love the drive now because everything's regenerating and the trees are all growing so it makes me feel good again, so good.
The centrality of connecting to Country for healing, recovery and holistic well-being is reinforced by Aunty Margaret, an Elder and Waminda board member, who comments:
People are very connected to the ocean. I think they're not going to fully recover until COVID goes and it stops disrupting everything because they really haven't been able to recover because COVID came just after the bushfires. But their connection to the water and that, they get … how could you say it? … like a sense of belonging, when they go to the water to collect their food and to fish and to do all of that stuff. That's all a normal part of our culture, to be connected to the water and live from the water.
Aunty Margaret's words demonstrate the centrality of practices involving the ocean for enhancing well-being after the bushfires and how COVID-19 movement restrictions made such gatherings and intermingling with the sea impossible for some communities. Simultaneously, for those communities who were able to continue to be nourished and sustained by the ocean, these cultural practices involving water were key to mitigating the isolation, uncertainties and restrictions that were part of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Complex view of bushfire as a resource for healing
Manaaki, a case worker, describing his experience of the bushfires, illustrates the tensions, complexities and nuanced view of fire underpinning the Waminda response:
It was like the apocalypse. It was confronting living in bush smoke every day. Having, you know, ashes landing in your backyard, just awake all night with the worry of maybe the house might get burnt down, you know, and watering the roof. I think seeing injured and dead animals from it too was pretty hectic… Yeah, I think also understanding the necessary sort of process of it [fire] for healing Country… how fire relates to birthing and renewal, sort of like that phoenix concept… The germinator of seeds in Country here. Yeah, it was like the whole country was getting smoked and sort of like a ceremonial state but the level it went to was not good for the trees and not good for Country. There is a lot of healing that needs to come about. Yeah, a lot of animals were lost, a lot of homes were lost. Yeah, I sort of balance it with – I balance the grief and loss with that philosophy of the renewal of life.
This stance of holding in tension the terrible, regenerative, and ceremonial potentials of fire is embodied in Waminda practising smoking ceremonies as a means of coming together for healing in the midst of their bushfire response. Sharmaine, a manager, and member of Waminda's cultural committee explains.
So, when we came back from the bushfires and come back into work, and there was that feeling of loss, and there was that feeling of grief … So, yeah, we thought, "Well, what do we need to do? We need to come together. We need to come to a place where that healing, we need that cleansing, we need a smoking". So, that's where the smoking actually come from, and that's what the cultural committee agrees to have with all staff [both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal], because it affected all staff.
Caring for Country after the bushfires- a practice for healing
A common practice evident in community yarns is the healing power of caring for Country and learning to care for Country after the bushfires. Meryn's narrative is representative:
So, we did wildlife care and the wild feeds. Also, people were putting bread out, and so we were going around collecting the bread, because it's not actually good for them. We put fruit out instead. So, we did that around Watos with the boys, with the guidance of Maria and Jamie down the road telling us… And we got educated … on our walk we'd take a little thing of seeds, and you sprinkle it on the front yards of everyone down where it was all black, for the kangaroos and that. I think it's made all of us respect the land we live on and what it gives us. Not just our house, but everything around us, to watching it being black to seeing how quick it grew. Like, the green was, it come back really quickly, didn't it? The kids learnt so much about the animals and feeding them, putting water out, which they still do now. They all made the bird feeders, and how you can't paint them because you don't want them to get sick from the paint… it's all got to be oiled. We learnt all that from other Elders teaching us. People sharing their knowledge. As young people, you don't really know… I never, ever looked at the ground, the trees, how beautiful everything was, until that fire.
Here Meryn describes how this small community came together to care for the land and kin after Country was devastated by the fires. Neighbours, both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, who hadn't had much contact prior to the fire were guided by those with experience in local wildlife and land care, enabling this young Aboriginal family to learn and to begin to recover together. Meryn goes on to describe how these practices were critical to the recovery, health, and well-being of her children:
Looking after Country feeds us and the kids. The green trees and how healthy it is, only helps their health. Without that, kids like… how nasty and dark and gloomy and yuck the ground were for them. They wanted to see how… and they went down and said, oh look, it's growing, Mum, there's flowers! They just started to see… it's all black, and then there's one green plant and then more… and they want to take photos of that. And we are also so grateful to still see there's kangaroos bouncing around again.
Perhaps the COVID-19 movement restrictions allowed these children and their community to see and notice these first green shoots, the first flowers. Perhaps if they were able to travel to school and work each day, this learning and care would not have unfolded. The small shoots of renewal may have gone unnoticed as they require slow time, close looking, touching, and smelling, an intense local attention to be seen.
Zooming out to broader context: Discounting, denying and not valuing Aboriginal ways of knowing, being and doing
This bundle of practices that shape and are shaped by Waminda's Country-centred conception of local communities challenge dominant fire risk reduction, response, and recovery discourses which position 'the bush' and its inhabitants at the bottom of the hierarchy for protection after human life and property.
In a collaborative yarn Aleesha and Sharmaine, managers, discuss the discounting of Aboriginal ways of knowing, being and doing embedded in such discourse.
Aleesha: I think the other part of the bushfire was the fact, the thing that made it complex, well what hurt more is that as Aboriginal people, we've been ignored for that long, we wouldn't be in the place that we are in if it wasn't for the impact of colonisation, being ignored and not listened to our traditional practices from day dot… So, when I think of the fires, I think of the ignorance. I think of how we've got practices that have worked for hundreds of thousands of years, but they just get pushed aside, and then we're watching our Country, all this devastation and all that harm, because we're ignored.
Sharmaine: And I think too, it goes back to, it's always at the cost of something, when white people don't listen, and it's always at the cost of our sufferings, our environment, our Country, our land, us as people.
Within this colonised context, the data illustrates how this bundle of practices that enact a Country-centred view of local communities contributes to people's capacity to care for and be cared by Country and strengthens their sense of belonging to their communities. Such practices, thereby, create conditions of possibility for healing and enhancing well-being for children, adults, communities, and Country.
Community-led
Being led by community, listening to local people, recognising the importance of local knowledge, and trusting that the community knows what is required and what matters most to them is a dominant practice bundle evident in the data.
The following quote by a case worker represents this orientation to responding to disasters.
And the work we do is driven by, it's led by community. And I think that's a really strong message… We are led by community and the need comes from community and that leads us. So those decisions were made by community, and we just acted upon the needs of the community.
Being community-led requires practices different from those generally enacted by emergency services, large non-government organisations and the government. Below we discuss three practices: deep listening, response-ability, and networking, that the data analysis suggests work together to enable a community-led response.
Deep listening
Deep listening is central to being community-led and a key relational practice in the narratives. John, a member of the maintenance crew, turned first responder in the bushfires explains:
I think if anyone is looking to put themselves in a position to help anyone, the most important thing is to just sit there and listen. Leave your phone in the car. Grab a bit of pen and paper, then write it all down and feel that - be connected to it. Listen to the pain. You shouldn't say anything. If you're going to listen, you should only probably talk when asked… We could have sat in each community for hours on end. You've just got to get down there and have an understanding of what they was going through and the only way to do that is sit front and centre and to listen.
John's comments encompass deep listening, listening that is respectful, that is felt and does not involve filling the silence but pays quiet attention to what is both said and not said.
Deep listening, as the foundation to being able to be community-led in the midst of disaster responses, is evident in Bridget's, a mental health practitioner's advice:
Listen, listen to community. No service has all the answers for community, like community, has their own answers. They will know what's needed. They're like the experts in their own lives and their own stories. Problems can be incurred when decisions about what is needed, is out of sync with what's actually being asked for .
The practice of deep listening, of sitting and holding people's suffering at the centre of attention, is crucial but not sufficient if responses are to be community-led and 'in-sync' with what is needed. Determining how to quickly cobble together the resources to deliver what is needed demands what Donna Haraway [43] describes as response-ability.
Response-ability
Each day as the climate-related crises unfolded, Waminda had to cultivate the capacity to respond and engage with the unexpected. Being response-able is central to effective responses, as it answers the trust of the held-out hand, demonstrates listening and remembering and, thereby, enables community-led responses. John explains:
If you're going to do something about it or your actions, you know, there's no point in saying "oh yeah I'm gunna", get it, get it down there. Get it off the trucks. I think that's what it was all about, just being present in the moment and listening and relaying that back… So, I'd ring up and say, "June we need this" and by the time we' d get back that night we were able to access it. We were able to go purchase it. Jade and my old Brett, our finance team just had everything sorted for us. It was a collective. It wasn't just us but the team, everyone to help and the whole organisation involved, community too. Waminda listened and Waminda actioned it.
Here response-ability is a collective knowing and doing that requires an ecology of practices to be enacted just in time to ensure communities can access the supplies, the medical attention, and the people to listen to their stories. Indeed, all the arrangements they need to sustain themselves and live with the anxiety, stress, and grief that disasters provoke. Continually cultivating response-ability ensured Waminda could meet the obligations and responsibilities that 'turning up' entails.
Networking
Building, extending, maintaining, and using networks across the southeast coast is a prerequisite for being community-led. The networks Waminda relied upon during the environmental and public health crises were not a contact list stored on a computer, but multigenerational webs, nodes and pathways tied together with sticky threads of connection.
Karena, a well-being support practitioner, and member of the cultural committee, explains:
We identified who the key people were in the communities who we could reach out to- to speak to them about what support the community may need that we could provide and ensure particularly for that far-south coast that it got to everyone and knowing that that's our mob as well. We needed to be there to be able to support them.
Waminda used these key contacts and relationships as nodes, and they in turn distributed what was needed throughout their communities, creating an interlaced web in which communication travelled along many lines multi-directionally. Aunty Phyliss, an Elder, described how the process worked during the COVID pandemic.
We got really good hampers from Waminda, which was really essential, and Makala would drop them all off for us… what she brought up really went around a wider community… community of people that missed out, to the people in lockdown, families with COVID. Yep, we were like drop-off point for a whole network around here, Albion Park, Unanderra, Dapto, Shellharbour...
But these networks are hard won and not easy. Sharmaine explains:
I'll be honest, that can be challenging for us too at times. I mean, when I think about the bushfires, that was really hard, making sure that we're having contact with those, certain contacts in community, because not all community get along, so therefore, we've got to make sure that we're actually talking to everyone so that we're not leaving anyone out. A mainstream service, they can't do that, they can't guide that. It's hard enough for us to do that, let alone a mainstream service.
This bundle of practices that we call 'community-led' can be traced out to the institutional context within which Waminda's responses emerged.
Zooming out to broader context: Lack institutional listening and responsiveness
Amid the bushfires and Covid-19, Aboriginal community members report an absence of listening by those with decision-making power, including some health department officials and emergency services personnel and politicians. Community were denied not only a voice but also an audience. Lora, maintenance crew turned first responder, explains:
They never lost their voice. From Batemans Bay all the way down to the Inlet no one was really listening apart from I think Waminda and a few other people. They were asking you know but like our government went down, it was a big thing with Scomo [nickname of former prime minister], but it was more for the 6 o'clock news.
Yasmin, a young single mother with two children with disabilities, describes what happened when she got a text letting her know that she and her children had contracted COVID:
I got a text message to say that I was positive. So, I rang them [the state health service] but that was it… I thought about it, like what happens if I need to call an ambulance right now? What do I do? What if they need to take me to hospital? What do I do? I've got two kids inside… they're both positive for COVID, we all had it, like what do you do? They didn't get back to me, no one listened… There was no, they didn't even send me phone numbers to say if you need help with food, nothing. There was nothing.
The lack of responsiveness evident in Yasmin's narrative was a common experience among research participants. Such a lack of response is dangerous, given the responsibility the state health services were accorded in providing information and guidance during the pandemic. A member of the Waminda executive describes the struggles experienced trying to secure timely responses from the health system when COVID-19 first began spreading in the Aboriginal community.
Yesterday, there was a positive case in one of our clients. NSW Health just didn't know what to do about that. We rang them and said, "Well what's going to be our response? She's at home with her three-year-old, like what are you going to do? Who's going to ring her? "Oh yeah she's on the list". "When are you going to ring her?"… The day before we'd literally had 30 people on the Zoom, 30 big white bureaucrats talking about their response in the Aboriginal community, and they can't go out to one woman and a three-year-old and support her with what she's got to do and she's positive and sick. They are trying to work out what they're going to do while we're doing it and they're not listening.
It is clear from participants that while in principle primary and tertiary health services are funded to provide a service to all members of the community, in practice this was not occurring. Participants highlighted a lack of responsiveness to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in a way that meets their needs.
In this context where response-ability must be ongoing, not in the abstract but in practice, participants agreed it is difficult to overestimate the value of responses that are community-led and place local people and their knowledges at the centre of decision-making. Such practices contribute to people (re)gaining a sense of control over their life, hope for the future and ensure people experience recognition and representation.
Fluidity of boundaries
Engaging collaboratively, practising mutual respect, being response-able and privileging the expertise of the local community is also entangled with another practice evident in the yarns and observations - deliberately blurring and creating fluid boundaries between workers, community members, board members and their work roles. Many workers identify as being of the community rather than simply providing services to or for the community.
Dianne, a manager, and member of the cultural committee, explains:
Because they're us and we're them. That's the difference. I think that's a big difference with Waminda. As a service, we never ever separate ourselves from community, because we are community.
Willingness to change roles and transform spaces
In responding to the bushfires Waminda's staff had to quickly change their work roles. June, a member of the executive team, explains:
We don't ever get people to do anything we wouldn't do ourselves. I deliberately, and all the executive too, we were doing trips as well just so that it wasn't like, "Okay. Well, good luck and let us know how you go when you get back." We were just packing boxes and doing all that stuff to say, "This is what our whole response has to be because it's sort of family".
The building that is usually home to the SEWB and case management team was transformed into a warehouse and packing space. The maintenance crew became first responders. Michelle, member of the Beehive team, describes how their roles and work were transformed:
I remember the day that we heard about how badly the Aboriginal communities had been affected, we made a plan. We got everybody doing something, running around collecting stuff, purchasing stuff, putting the boxes together, putting the meals together, getting vouchers to help support people, trying to source generators. And we sent our maintenance team out there with all those resources for people, there were clothes, there were tents, there were sleeping bags, there were things for people who'd lost their homes… And we were the first on the ground for that community [Mogo], and in fact, in some instances it was weeks after we'd made first contact and provided them with help and assistance, that they actually got a little bit of support or even saw anyone from any of the other mainstream services. We were in constant contact with the maintenance teams to see how they're going. We were constantly monitoring the fire situation, making sure our teams were safe.
Expanding boundaries and the Waminda footprint
This bushfire response required Waminda to expand its service footprint and boundaries quickly.
Community, when push comes to shove, they'll absolutely, just respond. There's no question of whether you're overstepping your boundary, you know how AMSs [Aboriginal Medical Services] are supposed to only work from here to here, and the next AMS is responsible for this to this, there was none of that. There were people in need in community who weren't getting the help from mainstream services, and it was either us or no-one. There wasn't a question of whether or not we should. You just don't leave your kin to suffer.
Zooming out to broader context: Exclusionary boundary-making practices
This expansion of boundaries occurred when some other ACCHOs directly impacted by the bushfire, could not meet the overwhelming and urgent needs of community. Further, many Aboriginal community members experienced mainstream services as hostile, discriminatory and unwilling to assist. Trevor, an Aboriginal community member in the Dalmeny yarn and volunteer at the evacuation and recovery centres, explains:
The first shift I did at Batemans Bay, I was sitting there watching black fellas come in, get their number, told to sit down, and wait. White fellas come in, get a number, push through, go, and talk to someone, here is your hotel. Then, and I'm shaking, I'm so angry about this, I overhear shit like "that family over there is Aboriginal so just watch them because they're from Mogo and they said they lost their house but Mogo's fine so they're just scamming". Because it was two or three days for them on their little system to catch up to say that Mogo had been hit, and so for days black fellas are coming in from Mogo and they're being ridiculed, they're being made out to be liars, they're being made out that they're ripping the system off and they're being sent away in shame with nothing.
Restricting service responses to within the boundaries determined by an inaccurate data system unable to keep pace with the spread and impacts of the mega fires produced care-less, culturally unsafe, discriminatory responses that were threaded through with racist attitudes and practices.
Caring: a sophisticated, collective, sociomaterial accomplishment
Caring for humans and other-than-human kin is at the heart of healing in climate-related disasters and a crucial practice bundle evident in the data. At Waminda, care is not a transaction, a quality, or a dyadic relationship between the carer and those being cared for. It is caring as an ongoing, sophisticated, collective, sociomaterial accomplishment.
Bridget, a mental health practitioner comments:
There's that idea of collective care, which is culturally embedded and based on the very, if you like, vital and personal nature of the work, people are people. It's humanising, actually. It's a humanising way of providing care, as opposed to some of the mainstream approaches you could argue, would be more dehumanising in their approach.
This type of caring, that contains the germs of partial healing even in the face of devastation and destruction, is made up of a texture of practices including taking anticipatory action, hanging in there, staying with the struggle and creating opportunities for women to look after their own bodies and get healthier and happier with the Waminda family. Perhaps the aspects of care practices that were most dominant in the data are the powerful role of sociomaterial arrangements and enabling women to be active in their own care.
Sociomateriality of care practices
Throughout the narratives and yarns, care practices concerning both the bushfires and COVID-19 involved lots of 'stuff'. Care was carried and enacted with/in generators, clear eyes, care-packs, bandages, food and drink, mobile phones, and social media. Natalie, an Aboriginal Health Worker, explains how she and three other young women from the palliative care team put together care packs for families during the COVID-19 lockdown, when the children were required to be home schooled:
So, this room was just lined up with boxes. There was like 20 or 30 boxes going out every few days to different families and we were listening to the families about what they needed as, depending on how many kids they had and the ages and how many adults were in the house, making sure that they had things appropriate in the box suitable for that family. So, they weren't all just the same, each box was sort of tailored for the family... We done the food as well, craft and the activity packs for kids, basically having things set up at home because of the lockdown… Then the maintenance team would come and pick them up or anyone that was able to chuck them in their car would come pick them up from here and then drop them off or we'd put them in the big bus and then drive around and drop them off. And during that time as well we were still continuing the food hampers and all the supplies for the bushfires.
A mental health practitioner elaborated:
We had people's names on the box, we wrapped it in gift paper with a ribbon. It definitely felt, it felt important for us, it was a genuine gesture. It wasn't a stock standard gesture.
Here care matters in all senses of the word. Caring rests on understanding relationships as a response to another on their terms and in their specific circumstances.
Women active in their own care
The sociomateriality of care is also evident in the following quote from an interview-to-the-double with Bella, a diabetes educator. It reflects the everyday way in which Waminda practises care:
It's about the ladies wearing the CGM, the continuous glucose monitor, and so learning about their glycaemic control and their patterns even when they're asleep and the reasons why it might be high, and they can see in real time what their blood glucose levels are doing. So, it's not me saying oh, you can't eat that because… It's more self-determination, so they might go, oh wow, I just had some pasta for dinner and my sugars went up to 16 and they stayed up all night long; maybe pasta's not such a great option for me.
The entanglement of technology with care practices was also used to promote bodily autonomy in the bushfire and COVID-19 crises, as Annie, a midwife explains:
I suppose from a clinical perspective, thinking about trying to provide clinical services within the main hub and then out in community when the fires and COVID are happening, it's pretty hard to navigate how to get past all the risk. We were able to provide telehealth services, facetime on phones and iPads and organising just over-the-phone advice. What I've seen is that it's given the women that we look after their body autonomy as well. So, we educate them about how to look after themselves and their bodies during pregnancies, get them to feel their babies, and get them to do their own checks at home when they think that they might be unwell and unable to come in.
Zooming out to broader context: Patriarchal, white colonial society
Waminda's care practices are enacted in the context of a patriarchal white-settler colony, its ongoing immigrations, and struggles over recognition for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Mainstream service providers and government departments have and continue to cause harm to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The service system often looks for a deficit, which in turn generates a deficit. This patriarchal, colonial deficit lens tends to regard Aboriginality and culture as a risk, entrenching more harm by casting what is a strength as a deficit.
The following extract from a collaborative yarn with Waminda staff analyses the practice of using iPads and Facetime to teach pregnant women how to monitor their bodies during the bushfires and the pandemic:
Luz: Working in the child protection space, there are that many women who were seen as not receiving antenatal care, because they were scared to go out during COVID, but then they came under the attention of child protection services, or even have their kids removed as a result of not having antenatal care.
Sharmaine: … and a big part of that, is because we're Waminda, and it's matriarchal. So that's a really big thing, women active in their own care, it's women's self-determination.
Aleesha: And it goes back to sovereignty never ceded, and that includes our own personal bodies.
In this context, caring creates affective relations that enhance a sense of control over one's body, hope for the future, and belonging to a community in which care matters. Such practices are, in the words of a community member from Ulladulla,
so helpful for mental health. That's the big thing – mental health… they work on how you feel about yourself and how you can connect with each other.
Using organising practices to orientate situated actions and manage risks
In this section, we discuss the key organising practices, including Waminda's Model of Care (incorporates the Balaang Healing framework and the staff well-being framework), and the emergency management plan (for details of these models and frameworks see Waminda, Annual report 2021–2022 [44] that coordinate and enable the bundles of practices discussed in this paper to ‘hang together’ to form an holistic Waminda response, thereby, enhancing healing, recovery and wellbeing.
These organising practices, which have culture and the recognition of the impacts of colonisation sedimented throughout, were organically and dynamically integrated into the ways of doing, being and valuing during the environmental and public health crises. Tayla, an Aboriginal health worker, comments:
Everything we do talks to our Model of Care within Waminda. It's embedded. Waminda's Model of Care is embedded to me as Tayla, as Aboriginal health worker, as Infection Control Officer, as all my hats that I hold, Waminda's Model of Care is embedded.
In Tayla's words, the Model of Care is embodied in her practice. A mental practitioner and leader of the SEWB team discussing their response to the bushfires and then covid concurs:
Our way of being, of working collaboratively actually embodies the healing framework. Everything we've been doing was in line with the healing framework… But it wasn't like, any of us got out the healing framework and went off each bit and said somebody signs. It was this natural progression.
In this way the Model of Care orientated Waminda's response to crises but wasn't used as a step-by-step guide that pre-determined how to proceed.
June, in her role as emergency response coordinator in the bushfires, discusses the emergency management plan and the staff well-being framework:
We've had to have in place for accreditation, and just because it's good practise, that sort of emergency management plan, but you can never ever imagine using it. So, when it actually did happen there was some things that did just really click in from having to do that for all these years… So, my home became, like a little SES, because I had shit everywhere and everything all laid out on the table and everyone's phone numbers and everyone's contact details, their next of kin and the maps. The TV was going the whole time and the radio and the phone with alerts and then just hooking up trying to think who was affected by what. Just getting my head around really quickly with IT about contacting staff all at once through our text messages and stuff… So having that staff well-being framework and actually doing it, like making 130 calls four times a day.
The relations between Waminda's organising models, frameworks and plans and the bundles of practices that made up the Waminda response to the crises are complex and interconnected. The Model of Care and the emergency management plan are best understood not as a pre-existing series of sequenced steps that prescribe practice but as conceptual, affective, and culturally-situated resources for action. Accordingly, the practice bundles articulated in this paper were not explicitly determined by Waminda's models and plans but in situ by local interactions with staff, communities, and Country. The Model of Care and the emergency management plan are artefacts inseparable from the practices within which they are enacted. Planning and articulating the Model of Care is a form of culturally-situated practice. Using plans in this way to orient action enabled Waminda to improvise, take risks and manage them responsively:
It was really high risk… we had to make calculated decisions all of the time. And some of the decisions might've been too risky but I suppose we were within our capacity of knowing what we had to do… We knew that it was high risk, and we knew that we had to be quite calculated about it. We would look at where the fire fronts were and where they were going and sometimes, they had to avert and not go to places. John was quite incredible, and he would ring me and say, "June I think if we stop at Mogo on the way home that's not going to give us enough time to get through X" and I'm like, "Okay well you can't go there today. You've got to come back".