Posts Tagged ‘REFLECTIONS’

After years of disconnection from its beloved lakefront, the town of Jindabyne is preparing to rediscover its voice, its heritage, and its sense of place through a powerful new initiative. Lake Jindabyne Reflections ~ Stories of Snowy & the Mountains is a community-led storytelling project that will share the rich and often unheard stories of the region, bringing to life the cultural, social, and emotional legacy of Jindabyne and its people.

The project will feature locally recorded stories from Monero–Ngarigo Elders, Snowy Hydro workers, ski pioneers, Old Town Jindabyne residents, and veterans, made accessible through QR-linked signage installed along the redeveloped foreshore trail.

For Olivier Kapetanakos, President of the Jindabyne Chamber of Commerce, the project represents far more than just a creative endeavour.

“We lost access to our lake foreshore, an economic and emotional centre for this town, when the area was closed for construction and safety works,” Kapetanakos said.
“In that time, we saw a loss of over 45,000 visitors across two seasons, which likely stripped at least $2 million from our local economy.”

But the cost was more than financial. According to Kapetanakos, the absence of the lakefront also left a cultural and emotional void.

“This isn’t just about tourism. This project is about healing,” he said.
“It’s about helping people reconnect with what this place means and why it matters. Heritage, identity, and mental wellbeing are deeply intertwined.”

The lakefront, once a hub for both recreation and community life, was effectively removed from public access during major infrastructure upgrades. While works are now nearly complete, community leaders say it will take more than pathways and landscaping to bring meaning back to the space.

“You can’t build a community with concrete alone,” Kapetanakos said.
“You need stories, culture, pride, and connection. That’s what Reflections is doing. It gives people something to belong to again.”

The project is aligned with state and local infrastructure investment, including the Snowy Monaro Regional Council’s foreshore redevelopment and the broader Snowy Mountains Special Activation Precinct plan.

Mental health professionals have long pointed to the value of cultural storytelling and community identity as protective factors in times of change. Research shows that shared purpose and place-based reflection help strengthen community resilience and individual wellbeing, particularly in regional and rural areas recovering from disruption.

By embedding lived experience directly into public space, the Reflections project offers a gentle and accessible way for people to pause, reflect, and reconnect, with each other and with the region’s unique history.

“We have irreplaceable heritage in Jindabyne, Indigenous, Hydro, alpine, national park, and post-war migration stories. And yet we’ve had no real way to share any of it,” said Kapetanakos.
“This is the right project, at the right time, and in exactly the right place.”

The Lake Jindabyne Reflections project is currently seeking funding and partnerships to bring this vision to life.