“Together we can do anything”

In this NSW country town, locals have set out to heal generations of heartache with kindness and hope.

Aunty Ruth Dunn sits by a crackling fire, lit by her grandson to warm the house before she was even out of bed. There’s a chill in the air this morning in Bellbrook, a tiny town of roughly 300 people beside the wide, green Macleay River near Kempsey, on the mid-north coast of NSW. Ruth was born here, 65 years ago, amid the green hills that roll from Barralbarayi, or Sugarloaf Mountain, down to the sea. And she’s lived here in the Nulla Aboriginal Community for most of her life, watching the land and the people change for both better and worse.

“When I was growing up,” she says, “the people were friendly. We’d knock on doors if we wanted to walk through their paddocks to go and pick lemons or our indigenous fruit, or to walk to the river or the creek to go fishing. A lot has changed now. A lot of people have