On Monday, October 25, page founder Kris Parker announced that as the flooding situation had started to wind down, the page would stay active but no new posts could be made after October 31.
The announcement was met with a lot of praise and thanks to Mr Parker and his admin team.
It was also met with messages and comments asking for the page to continue.
“I had a couple 100 messages and a whole heap of posts or comments on that original post that I made begging me not to shut it down,” Mr Parker said.
“It wasn’t for any other reason other than I thought the flooding in the area that we were focusing our efforts on were going to start to recede by end of the week.”
It didn’t take long for the suggestion that the page should become a permanent emergency information hub for the Goulburn Valley.
“We’ll be keeping it as a floods information page while we’re still fighting them and change the name after to make it more of a Goulburn Valley emergency information page,” Mr Parker said.
Mr Parker started the page looking to collect current photos of the Shepparton and Mooroopna floods for an SES flood guide but it developed into a flood emergency hub after he saw a need for it.
“I was originally with the big Shepparton community page and when they shut down, it made it really hard to put information out about what was happening,” Mr Parker said.
“I thought I’ll transform the photo page and things just happened from there.
“It sort of morphed and evolved becoming sort of an emergency information hub.”
As a former SES volunteer, Mr Parker knew what the protocols would be for such an event and was consistently updating the page with flood updates from Vic Emergency and SES.
As such, the number of page members grew.
Starting with 300 to 400 people, the page now has about 38,200 followers.
Mr Parker was happy to see and watch the community come together.
“It’s really heart-warming to see that community spirit,’’ he said.
“We live in an age nowadays, we sort of spend a lot more time away from each other, but to see a group come together and really put out that word to help others has been fantastic.
“There was a lot of that selflessness of giving away your time for nothing.
“You might be over in Mooroopna where they were cut off for a few days and the group would rally behind each other.
“It’s been fantastic to watch those things morph on their own and evolve when people would go out and help the community.”
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