The Country Arts Support Program (CASP) has assisted a wide array of arts and cultural projects over the decades but this year has thrown up something different for Coonamble.

A local history/mystery project is among eight within the Outback Arts region that were successful in gaining a small injection of funds.

Along with traditional Indigenous dance classes, arts workshops at Marra Creek, and a plywood mural depicting the beginnings of Nyngan, this project will take us back to a notorious moment in the town's history.

Coonamble woman Kate Page was murdered in her home at the height of the 1971 floods.

Mrs Page was a well known and much-loved local identity and her murder shook the tight-knit community to the core.

To this day, her killer has not been caught and her murder remains an unsolved mystery.

Now, local artist Jillian Kelly, is hoping to develop a podcast that looks at what Coonamble was like at that time, what the residents remember of Kate and the event that shocked the district - and the country - on 5 February 1971.

“It’s a marker of time,” said Dr Kelly. “Most people who were living here at the time can tell you where they were and what they were doing at the time.”

“I want to capture that.”

Dr Kelly, who is also a veterinarian, has had previous interviewing and podcasting experience from her time with the Local Land Services.

She hopes to record ten interviews with a range of people who were living here at the time.

“I have interviewed quite a lot of people before but that was with an ag focus,” she said.

“I know some people are reluctant to be recorded, but the interviews are like a local history project.

“It’s really not so focused on the event, it’s focus is more what life was like in the 1970s in Coonamble.”

The project is something of a passion project, giving Dr Kelly a chance to combine her love of local history with her interest in podcasting and leave a legacy for the local area.

“We’re almost at a point where people who were adults in Coonamble in 1971 are getting quite old and their stories could be missed.”

“It's probably no surprise that my favourite author is Agatha Christie - I’ve always been interested in mysteries.

“I could have picked any moment in time but it was such a momentous event I think it’s got potential to be a really good story,” she said. “But I don’t want to make people feel uncomfortable. “

“I’m not an investigative journalist - it’s the yarns and the characters that paint the picture.”

She says initial conversations have revealed some fascinating insights into life in Coonamble.

“I’m interested in exploring what small country towns were like at that time, the role of religion and how important it was at the time, and just the sense of community.

“It seems like a very free existence growing up in Coonamble then.

“It was a place where people felt very safe. Kids played in the streets until their parents called them in for dinner,” she said.

“You’d leave your vehicles unlocked and your house unlocked and no one worried about walking around after dark.

“Something like that happening in our little town was really unusual.”

The fact that the crime remains unsolved is also surprising in a town where everyone is so closely connected.

“Aunt Kate went to church every day so people missed her when she didn’t arrive,” Dr Kelly said.

“A neighbour noticed that the mail wasn’t taken out of her box that day and raised the alarm.”

“And when you start talking to the locals you find some of the things that were printed in the major newspapers at the time weren’t true,” she said.

“It was at the height of the flood. Most roads in and out of town were still dirt so although it was very difficult to move around at that time we weren’t completely cut off.”

The small CASP grant will help bring some shape to a potential podcast once the stories have been collected.

“I have until December. I just thought I’d have a dabble around in a local history project.

"It’s not my full-time job and the grant is not for my time, it’s to pay a journalist in Orange to storyboard it at the end and edit the recordings so to make them into something, hopefully a podcast if we get that far.”