Category: Blog

Image: Designer Annmaree Dalziel

The FAST CARS story began (outside of Kate’s head) back in December 2020. “I approached then Local Stages producer Kylie Shead and BRAG Director Sarah Gurich to discuss the seed of an idea – Brock -The Musical. They loved it and supported me to apply for local, state and federal funding,” Kate explains. “My intention was to creatively respond to recent controversy regarding the proposed construction of a go-kart track on a sacred women’s site at Wahluu/Mount Panorama. Whilst this important conversation was in some ways divisive; in powerful ways it served to unite many voices in the community. A myriad of stories emerged about why people love the iconic mountain. And love of place is indeed at the centre of this project,” Kate said.

The Fast Cars project developed throughout a series of regional creative residencies over three years. The residencies supported eleven professional artists to develop the production design, set and costume elements, lanterns, storytelling, scriptwriting and the creation of an original score and songs for the site-specific performance. In March 2021 the community were offered the opportunity to join a free weekly drum circle led by musician Rob Shannon. Three years later the group is still going strong and performing regularly beyond the Fast Cars project at local community events.

Community artist Phil Relf (Ikara Celebratory Events) led master classes with teachers from small rural schools Raglan, O’Connell and Perthville Public and three community lantern making workshops at Tremain’s Mill. In response to Kate’s comedic script, designer Annemaree Dalziel chose seven birds whose spots, stripes, and speckles create a palette of colour to adorn the sides of the lanterns. This selection was guided by local twitcher Tiffany Mason. Students used coloured paper to add birds on one side of the lantern and painted their own ‘story’ of the mountain on another side. Cross-country runners, helmuts, mountains, race-tracks and giant sneakers were some of the drawings they created to show their connection to the mountain. Three hundred school students and one hundred community members participated. Workshops facilitated by Ikara Celebratory Events resulted in the MOUNTAIN TALES event as part of Bathurst Winter Festival (2022). A three hundred strong crowd joined the Fast Cars Drummers to parade lanterns down Keppel St Bathurst despite the snow and sleet! Spectators were greeted at Tremain’s Mill by fire-twirling, poetry, and live music and digital arts works.

The ‘Fast Cars Yarners’ knitted galahs and crocheted ‘flower’ hubcaps to adorn the set of the stage play. Led by artist Leanne Wicks from Kandos and Rylstone, individuals and groups across the central west participated including; New Horizons Aged-Care Support Group facilitated by Michelle Bolt and the Bathurst River Yarners. The River Yarners are now care-taking the ‘flock’ of birds as a creative way to raise awareness about protecting wildlife.

Production design saw the collaboration between interdisciplinary artist, designer/maker Annemaree Dalziel and sculptor of large scale works Harrie Fasher.

The final FAST CARS was presented as a play with music in a site-specific location of the 1850s Agricultural Research Station at the base of Wahluu/Mt. Panorama. Lanterns and the yarned birds made in the course of the project became part of the set and the outdoor site decorations. Elders Wirribee Wiradjyuri (Aunty Leanna Carr-Smith) and Dinawan Dyirribang (Uncle Bill Allen Jnr) welcomed audiences to country.

The exquisite moving image artwork ‘Wiradyuri Ngurambang Ngayirr – Sacred Country’ screened as the moving opening to the show. A collaboration by artist Nicole Welch, and Wiradyuri Elder Wirribee with drone footage by Henry Denyer-Simmons and sound by Tim Roebuck, this work explores shared understandings between First Nation and Non-First Nation women, connecting to the landscape from Tarana along the Wambuul/ Macquarie River to Wahluu/ Mt. Panorama. It offers a space for contemplation toward a healing of people, community, place, and shared stories. Elder Wirribee voices part of the narrative of Custodianship of Country collaboratively working with visual artist artist Nicole Welch, whose world-renowned work is linked to care-taking the environment.

Although rain prevented them performing each night, the community drumming group played before the show.  Short films by Jock Alexander screened during interval. Wiradjuri Gadigal vocalist Akala Newman performed pre-show on the final night.

“FAST CARS invited community participation every step of the way. From yarning with the Bathurst Wiradjuri elders; to local crafters knitting galahs and crocheting flower hubcaps; school children parading handmade paper lanterns at Winter Festival; to  the Fast Cars drum circle creating a joy storm every time they perform. This project lives and breathes ‘Bathurst’ with all the quirks, complexities and characters of our city,” Kate Smith said. “Thank you to the fabulous array of professional creatives – performers, designers, musicians, visual artists, directors and writers who joined us along the way. Our wish is that this beautiful project speaks to the beating heart of Bathurst- the iconic mountain Wahluu/Mt. Panorama and what it means to us all.”

Creative Force: A podcast with exceptional women, took me four years to make! I interviewed five wonderful creatives during COVID 2020 lockdowns. Take a trip around the globe and soak up these creative powerhouses unpack cultural activism, artvisim, writing, politics and indigenous knowledge. It is deep, funny, fascinating and inspiring.

Podcasting alone was hard. I am a theatre person, used to collaborating and moving my body to create in a room with others.This was hours of time alone with new technology, and along the way a new creative project – my play FAST CARS-  pushed in and stole my heart. But, as one of my guests, the wonderful Country Collins said, “Completion is key”. I learned so much about my creative process; trust, timing and how to back yourself out of the corner of self-doubt and sabotage. Golden threads that have fuelled my next project about getting older and wiser – but more on that later. Ultimately, I found a wonderful sound engineer who got me out of a DIY hole, Tim Roebuck is a patient and most excellent collaborator. It took me until 2024 to finally publish this baby and here she is. These women are so beautiful and I thank each of them – Kirsty Whiten, Michelle Evans, Courtney Collins, Kathy Scott, Laura Brown and my soul sisters Smith and Jones – from the bottom of my big fat heart. I can’t wait for you to meet them.

I was awarded the Create NSW Regional Arts Fellowship from 2019-2021. I curated a program of professional development that included a creative mentorship with The Trailblazery playwriting workshops with Jenny Kemp, an international residency in Ireland with The Corn Exchange, and an artistic collaboration with visual artist Kirsty Whiten. I presented conference papers, keynotes, mentored early career young artists and led a three year performance project about the mighty mountain, Wahluu/Mt Panorama, culminating in sell-out performances of my new play, musical comedy FAST CARS. You can read more about that whopper of a project here.

I was also deeply excited about trying my hand at something very new. Podcasting. I wanted to find new ways to express my creativity and was deeply challenged in new ways and old, learning so much about my creative process along the way.

The women I spoke with light up the skies with their brilliance, living their rich, creative lives loud and proud. I can’t wait for you to meet them.

CREATIVE FORCE: A podcast about exceptional women 

When COVID 19 moved our world’s inside, perceptions about where we live and work changed forever.

The luxury of online connections seeded the evolution of this podcast exposing me to a global community of incredible women – artists, writers, cultural activists, and Indigenous leaders. I asked them “What are the creative forces that drive you?”  Every single one of them said  “Where I live”.

From the forests of Ireland, a tiny village in Scotland, the mountains, vast farming plains and lush sub-tropical north in Australia.  For these women landscape – sea, sky, rock and river is the muse that inspires them to make  their mark on the world.

LAUNCHING APRIL 2024

Storytelling unites. It is an immensely powerful phenomenon that inspires a sense of belonging.

Storytelling also has the capacity to capture the grand spectrum of human experience that includes Bathurst’s significant landmark — Mt. Panorama/Wahluu — a sacred site that hosts many stories.

The reigning duality of this place that was originally a Wiradyuri territory holds and withholds countless tales. Such narratives deserve to be shared across the Central West community in calling up a rich world of song, memory, landscape and belonging. While the mountain’s double name captures a sustained tension between shadow and illumination — a tension that could be identified as a divided “black and white” Australia — what is nonetheless preserved are the shades and glimmers of experience that tilt toward reconciliation. Narrative provides us with a unique means in which to move toward the goal of reconciliation by giving us the power to speak our truths — it gives us the precious opportunity to forge meaning out of chaos, darkness, despair, but also hope, light and even beauty. Light, originally as fire and now as a form of electricity, provides us with the power to illuminate the shadows of our history.

The ’Mountain Tales at Bathurst Winter Festival’ embraces the mixture of voices that have come to shape both historical and modern-day Australia and the regional township of Bathurst. Its ceremony of lanterns, drums, film, song, and poetry opens our ears and eyes to the stories of Wiradyuri elders. Anyone and everyone are also invited to tell their stories. Everyone has their own story to tell. And everyone has their own truth to tell. The event traverses and celebrates difference in giving birth to words, sounds and images that tap into our most ancient and modern desires that all revolve around the need for belonging.

The event begins with a Lantern Procession at Tremain’s Mill in which participants who have hand crafted their beacons of fire march together to illuminating the darkness of a Bathurst winter’s night. This light procession is accompanied by Fast Cars Drummers whose earthbound sounds anchor the aerial rays of light. The power of sound, and moreover the rhythm of a drum, is evocative of our heartbeats reminding us of our collective mortality. The singular sound of a drumbeat is also emboldening as it externalises the invisible realm of our communal heart.

Then there will be a screening of the film ‘Wiradyuri Ngayirr Ngarambang – Sacred Country’  beamed upon the architectural site of Tremain’s Mill. Participants and spectators with be directed to a QR code to listen to the English translation of the Wiradyuri language featured in the artwork. A webpage with videos and your thoughts on the film — one which meditates upon the experience of Sacred Country — can be recorded. What will be evoked is the importance of silence as there is great silence around some stories …

There will then be a sharing of stories. Two speakers will narrate their experience, reminding us that storytelling was originally an acoustic practise. Alice Blackwood will recite a poem — not all stories are prose-like but are poetic forms reminding us that the origins of all languages are grounded in the world of song. Everyone is then invited to eat and drink and share their stories informally around the fire, whether it be through a song, poem, or an anecdote.

The ’Mountain Tales at Bathurst Winter Festival’ event celebrates the sound, imagery, taste, smell of collective experience and the binding powers of storytelling. In light of the rise of digital technologies, narrative often becomes a fragmented and individualised phenomenon; here we wish to honour the idea of storytelling as a binding social force. The ’Mountain Tales at Bathurst Winter Festival’ event is a reminder of the tactile and physical power of collective narrativity in which stories are shared and commemorated. It also encourages one to reflect upon the fact that we all live in a multi-cultural society and a township that has a rich history of memory and forgetting. This live event offers you with an opportunity to be both a spectator to and participant in storytelling — you are all invited to partake in the light, sound, food, and festivities.

by Dr. Suzie Gibson

Senior Lecturer in English, Charles Sturt University

Mountain Tales  Bathurst Winter Festival

Tremain’s Mill, Keppel St.

Saturday July 5-9pm

insta: katesmithyoga

 ‘Wiradyuri Nygayirr Ngurambang – Sacred Country’

A collaborative moving image artwork by Nicole Welch, Wiradyuri Elder Wirribee + Kate Smith

An immersive work exploring Wiradyuri Ngurambang Ngayirr. Wiradyuri Elder Wirribee shares part of the narrative of Custodianship of Country, collaboratively working with local Artist Nicole Welch’s work that is linked to care-taking the environment. This work explores shared understandings between First Nation and Non-First Nation women, connecting to the landscape from Tarana along the Wambuul/Macquarie River to Wahluu/Mt. Panorama offering a space for contemplation toward a healing of people, community, place, and shared stories.

Winter Solstice Yoga@ #bathurstregionalartgallery surrounded by the works of Euan Macleod and Andrew Merry. Immerse yourself in the surrounds of the art gallery for this relaxing and centring experience.These afternoons are magic. They are rich, soulful and kind. You will feel rested, nurtured and welcomed. Please join us. Sunday June 20, 3-5pm. Be still. Call in the light on the darkest day. Sound bath with Ashley Bland. Deep and restorative. All levels. 3-5pm

 A donation to the gallery to support purchase of new artwork for the Permanent Collection is encouraged.

https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/winter-solstice-yoga