In Gillies St Rochester last week I heard a business owner remark “there is always someone worse off’’ as he was shifting a sandbag from the front door of his business and tip-toeing inside the doorway as to not slip on the sludge-filled concrete floor.
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Fifteen-hundred kilometres away, in the flood-ravaged communities of NSW’s Northern Rivers there is a similarly prophetic attitude to the situation the population finds itself living.
Most live in caravans, most were uninsured for floods and have lost everything and most are still relying on the support of a flood-recovery hub to fill several voids in their existence.
Still, those same flood victims have volunteered to “drop everything’’ and travel to Rochester to assist in the clean-up effort.
Rochester has a strong connection to the communities of Coraki and Woodburn, which are 13 minutes apart on the banks of the Richmond River just south of Lismore.
Twice in the past six months, since all of Woodburn and the lower lying areas of Coraki were wiped out by storm surges and the ensuing flooding, the Rotary Club of Rochester has made the 1500km journey with relief items collected from the district.
All of Woodburn’s 320 homes were submerged beneath floodwaters, including the double-storey homes, while almost half of the homes in the the larger township of Coraki suffered substantial damage.
More than 2000 people lived in the two towns, but within the catchment area there was a similar number to the 3150 residents of Rochester — many who have had floodwaters flow through their homes.
Jordy Wade is the flood-recovery hub co-ordinator at Woodburn.
He and four friends opened the Woodburn hub as volunteers, in a very large industrial warehouse that they were given free of rent for a three-month period.
“I quit my job to do it,” said the former marketing co-ordinator with a surf brand.
In similar fashion to what has happened in Rochester, with the Community House, the volunteers partnered with the mid-Richmond Neighbourhood Centre.
“Through them we were able to apply for funding, which allowed us to find the money to pay rent at the hub,” Mr Wade said.
That funding application to the Department of Community and Justice allowed the Neighbourhood House to employ him as a co-ordinator and bring on three others as part-time ordinators.
Since then demand for support, and services, has seen six case workers employed to work with victims in the community.
“We were all volunteers until late June, when funding became available,” he said.
Mr Wade said, in his opinion, emergency efforts like flood support in Australia would always see the initial action done by volunteers and community.
“There is just way too much red tape for government agencies to be able to achieve what volunteers can,” he said.
Four strong months of donations have flowed through the hub at Woodburn, along with some government donations, but eight months after the two flood events — only a month apart — the hub and Mr Wade’s team are pretty much running their own race.
“We have partnerships with Foodbank and Oz Harvest for food,” he said.
“But the only way we can afford to do other projects is through public donations.”
Among those public donations were two significant “drops’’ by the Rochester community, clothing, personal items, kitchen utensils and crockery, along with a variety of other household items.
Mr Wade said he and others who had dealt with either Rotary club president Heather Watson or appeal co-ordinator Angela Beutel had been closely monitoring what was happening in Rochester.
“Knowing Heather and her team was a major reason for our concern, but I also have family down there. My grandmother lives in the area,” he said.
He said the hub teams at Woodburn and Coraki had both reached out to Rochester.
“I have a team who were willing to drop everything, to go and help, but Heather and Angela they were fine for now,” he said.
Woodburn, however, has its own problems — some which would shock home owners in Rochester, including the average flood-insurance premium in the area of $20,000.
In contrast to what is happening on the ground at Rochester, most insurance companies in the Northern Rivers area have failed to act.
“They haven’t done anything, most people have gone through two, three or four assessments,” Mr Wade said.
He said most of the damage to most people’s homes was done by storm surges, wind and rain, before the flooding event started.
“Most didn’t have flood insurance. It is a bit of a different scenario, as I understand it, to Rochester,” he said.
What is similar is that Woodburn and Coraki had experienced recent flood events, the last major flood being in 2017.
But nobody exepcted the storm surge and associated flooding of late February to be followed by a similarly devastating event a month later.
Mr Wade said insurance premiums in the Northern Rivers could be up to $40,000 a year for flood insurance.
“A $20,000 premium is standard, it is something people just can’t afford,” he said.
Mr Wade and his team at the Woodburn hub are are the only supermarket supplier in the town and among only three food outlets with the bakery and the fish and chip shop.
“When it comes to tools, food, government services, even things like laundry, we are it,” he said.
Many of the Woodburn and Coraki homes that were caught in the extreme weather event are not repairable and most people have taken up the Caravans at Homes program, offered through Resilience NSW.
“Most properties have one or two caravans on them. Those who didn’t have insurance have tried to retrofit the inside of their homes and the ones that did have insurance are even further behind in the recovery process,” he said.
Coraki, further inland, has half its population on a hill, but Lismore was also severely affected.
On a positive the Woodburn pub opened, albeit in a limited capacity, quite quickly after the flood event, along with a very basic pharmacy.
“There is no time line for the IGA to re-open and there is still no fuel in Woodburn,” Mr Wade said.
He said he would continue to maintain contact with the Rotary club leaders, offering his support in any capacity during the town’s recovery effort.
Kyabram Free Press and Campaspe Valley News editor