Australian Storytellers NSW have members from all over this great sunburnt country and, as we could not come together at our conference, we thought it would be good to get to know one another here, and find out how other storytellers are using story to enrich their lives and the lives of others.

It is with great delight we introduce you to Simona Galimberti.

“Once upon a time, there was a girl by candlelight. It was deep in the centre of the Australian desert. Ok, that’s a tad romantic, but the desert is vastly enchanting.

Alice Springs, Arrante Country, Central Australia, NT. As she was home on her own, only her and the flickering candlelight, she wrote a vision in a notebook; to showcase community art works, stories and written pieces that spoke from their voice, those who express from their own voice within.

Two years later, Voice Within Magazine was born in a town called Bellingen, in Gumbaynggirr Country, Mid-North Coast, NSW.

The business operates from this small town, as a Research and Writing consultancy; grant writing and word-smithing written pieces for business purposes, are the main services seeked from the community. In addition, with a passion of storytelling, provided as a community service and offering.

How the storytelling comes in, is through the People’s Library: Voices of the Community project. This girl, who is I, Simona, stepped into the Bellingen Library asking Jill, Manager of Bellingen Shire Libraries, and who has supported this project since July 2019, if storytelling for the community held at the libraries could be an option to explore and start.

Come to July 2020, we had our last event at Dorrigo. Beginning in Bellingen Library in March 2020, the world then asked of us to adapt through the pandemic, so Urunga was online in May. We went from gathering with extreme apprehension from the community to do so, as the library closed the following week. We went online, we a surprising number of story seekers to join us on the cyber platform. Returning to a calm after the storm, and gathering once again in the Dorrigo Plateau; the magical hills of the fairy folk of the Bellingen Shire.

People’s Library 2020, its aim and vision were to create a platform for people to share their story from fiction to true. We invited tall tales and personal stories, myth and legend, traditional story and folk tale to be told.

We had a story of a tree calling to have their death witnessed by a single human deeply connected to the waterways of the tree’s standing spot; or a Cedar Tree’s journey from forest to turning into the Alma Doepel ship, lumbered and milled and now sailing the Australian shores; a father and son finally connecting deeply, with just a single phone call, after years of separation; or stories of unknown fathers and family secrets never revealed; Black Cockatoos finding purpose via the calling of Rain Spirits; the finding home in the land of ‘Milk and Honey’; the witnessing of an American Indian ceremony in Canada and being brushed in darkness by the animal spirits; and, the Traditional Story of the Muurrbay Tree of the Gumbanyggirr Country. It is all welcome, and that it was. We all have a story and all out stories matter. People’s Library is a platform for the Voices of the Community to be heard.

Storytelling, to me, is sharing in a space of deep healing, allowing the voices of many to be heard over the constant disenchanting mainstream stories of sensationalism in the news, the stories that have motives and intent to coerce and push an agenda, to appease to an audience for influencing and popularity purposes. We all deserve to be heard in a sacred and vulnerable space, witnessed by those who feel without judgment and hear without prejudice. That is my hope to bring the art of oral storytelling to communities.

The girl by candlelight, that was her hope too.”

Simona Galimberti