A recent arts festival on beautiful Yuin Country, in the Eurobodalla region of the far south coast of New South Wales, provided an opportunity for reflecting upon place and people’s health, as well as the importance of growing health services in the area.
Charles Maskell-Knight and Susan Rogers write:
The beauty of the Eurobodalla region of Yuin Country, on the south coast of New South Wales, draws you in … long, sandy beaches, rocky, eroding headlands, dim stands of soaring gums with cycads at their feet, rolling green hills, wide river flats, turquoise, mangrove-lined waterways and always the clear, transparent light.
It is a landscape to be immersed in – to swim, to surf, to walk, to stand and gaze … and to try and capture in paint, in print, in colour …
And that was what we were here to see and do on a sunny weekend at the end of September, at the opening of the Eurobodalla region’s River of Art festival.
Since 2004 the Eurobodalla arts community has celebrated and showcased the work and talents of local artists annually at The River of Art festival – this year an 11-day event starting on 26 September and finishing on the NSW October long weekend.
There were over 100 different exhibitions, open studios, workshops, discussions, and concerts from Durras in the north to Bermagui in the south from which we could choose – an amazing output for a population of under 50,000 people.
Many of the events had multiple artists involved, and galleries which had a room dedicated to a River of Art exhibition would have also had visitors exposed to the works of their regular artists.
We attended well over a dozen exhibitions and studios from Batehaven down to Narooma between the afternoon of Friday 26 September and the morning of Monday 29 September.
We hoped to have seen more, but missed a couple due to running on Canberra time not country time… and the Tomago River was so inviting on Saturday morning, we simply had to go kayaking en route to the morning’s first event.
Inspired
We saw art from artists at every stage in their careers in just about every visual medium: beautifully executed etchings from a very-well established artist with an international presence; oil on canvas works from a mid-career professional artist with prices starting at almost $1000 and rising sharply; evocative en plein air acrylics from a rising artist; digital prints from another relative newcomer; and any number of good honest small to medium scale works from artists who would never give up their day jobs, or have retired from demanding day jobs, but who loved expressing themselves through the creative process.
Many of the works were inspired by the coast and the sea. The striking geology in every beach and cove, with strata tipped up at crazy angles speaking of past geological trauma captured the attention of some. Others were fascinated by the local bird life, the leaf litter underfoot, the grain of a particular wood or sculptural sprays of gum leaves.
The play of sun and cloud, tide and swell on the beaches and cliffs creates a new scene every day – if not every hour – for a sharp-eyed observer. Behind the beaches, swamps and alluvial grasslands are surrounded by sclerophyll forest, including stands of old growth trees which have evaded the rapacious hands of the loggers. These scenes create their own magic to be captured by Eurobodalla artists.
Even though we live on the Yuin coast or visit regularly, we are still struck every day by its beauty.
Time to talk
The tag line for the River of Art is “come for the art; stay for the coast”.
And they do. Cascading over the escarpment, artists, Canberra retirees and visitors from all over Australia flow down the highways, pooling in settlements around the beaches and waterways, joining those who have lived there for decades or millennia.
Ancient Yuin Country, already marked by well over a century of European agriculture – dairy, beef, horticulture, fishing, logging – and burgeoning tourism and service industries, is now hosting ever-expanding suburban style estates to house the growing number of residents.
More people means more demand for services, such as health.
As we beetled up and down the Princes Highway, wrestling with Google about the route to the next artist’s studio, we saw the new Eurobodalla Regional Hospital erupting out of the ground.
Strolling gently around artists’ studios gave us time to take in the art at a leisurely pace. It also gave us time to talk to each individual artist, hear their stories of coming to live at the coast and to listen to their unsolicited remarks about health services in the region.
Supply versus demand
Canberra’s proximity to the Eurobodalla region does have an impact. The influx of retirees from the capital is leading to a large population of over-65s and a high median age across the region.
Although this demography results in high demand for health services, the supply of services does not match demand.
It can be difficult for new residents to find a GP to accept them as a patient; waiting times for allied health services can be weeks if not months; there are hardly any resident specialists, and long waiting times to see the handful who provide outreach services from Canberra; and the Batemans Bay and current Moruya hospitals between them do not offer orthopaedics or cardiology or radiation oncology – important specialties for an elderly population.
The bright shiny new Eurobodalla Regional Hospital intended to address some of these deficiencies is under construction on a greenfield site just to the south of Moruya.
It will face a number of challenges when it opens, not least staffing, and convincing the Batemans Bay population that they will not die in an ambulance waiting in traffic on the Moruya River bridge.
What did we learn?
The Eurobodalla region is full of talented artists. Its landscape is inspiring. Local residents and visitors alike have endless opportunities to engage with it creatively and physically.
This engagement can bring many health benefits – mental and physical. For some individuals, this may mean they need fewer health services and less often.
But for the many who wish to live and age in such a beautiful place, it will mean they will need more, wide-ranging health services in the future.
Author details
Charles Maskell-Knight PSM was a senior public servant in the Commonwealth Department of Health for over 25 years before retiring in 2021. He worked as a senior adviser to the Aged Care Royal Commission in 2019-20. Charles has been a resident of the Eurobodalla region on Yuin land on the NSW South Coast for four years.
Susan Rogers worked on health policy in the Commonwealth Department of Health for many years before seeing the light and transferring to work on arts program management in 2009. She has had several retirements from paid employment – although fewer than Dame Nellie Melba. Susan has been a regular visitor to the Eurobodalla region for many years.
Read about Croakey’s new #PHCmatters initiative, which aims to support place-based storytelling about health
