On Saturday (a couple of days ago as I type this) I volunteered to assist the cleanup in Brisbane’s suburbs — the city council organised volunteering locations where you could sign up and be transported to places that needed help.
The process was well organised, except at the location I went to where the buses departed from a nearby bus terminal — mildly inconvenient if you’d transported yourself to the bus terminal and walked to the marshalling site, only to have to walk yourself back to the bus terminal… But honestly, mild inconvenience was probably far from most people’s minds right then.
The registration process was quick and easy, but I missed the briefing entirely because in a crowded high school hall with a couple of hundred (at least) people inside our briefing was delivered by a lady equipped with a librarian’s clipboard and the voice to match. A couple of people near me managed to pick up Oxley and Chelmer as potential locations, but I heard nothing else.
Council also seemed to have been a bit unprepared for the number of volunteers. Two shifts — one morning, one afternoon — were planned, and 6000 volunteers were expected across the four sites over the day. By lunchtime it was announced that 7000 people had arrived for the morning shift alone! There were not enough buses available after I’d been processed, so I and a couple of hundred other volunteers had to wait for transportation.
While we were standing in line for buses, the line stretched from the bus stop near Garden City across a bridge over the South East Freeway. We must have been clearly visible to the freeway traffic below, standing there with our shovels and brooms and buckets, because several cars and trucks blew their horns in encouragement as they passed below.
Eventually we were on a bus, and along the way I got my first view of some of the devastation. On Riawena Rd, muddy leaves on a roadside shrub near the bank of Stable Swamp Creek while we stood at traffic lights waiting to cross Beaudesert Road. I looked up to the creek bank and saw a couple of porta-loos that had been unceremoniously dumped on the other side of the creek. Then the traffic got moving, and we crossed Beaudesert Road to Granard Road, which was badly affected. Riding in a council bus, I was looking out the window to business that were well higher than the road level, and the water line was a good metre or so up the wall — had my bus been there at the flood peak, it likely would have been submerged. The front parking areas of the shops along Granard Road were littered with the contents of the various shops. My breath caught in my throat.
And then, suddenly, everything was normal again as we crested the high ground midway along Granard Road. I couldn’t help thinking “is that all?”. I was quickly answered “No”, as the bus turned onto the Ipswich Motorway.
I would find out later we were headed for Oxley Road, but the off-ramp was still under a metre or so of water. The Harvey Norman store at that off-ramp had a watermark at least a metre up the wall, and there was no-body around. It was eerie, since the car park of the Good Guys store just up the road was teeming with people… I later worked out that the HN store was probably still inaccessible. So because the off-ramp we needed was inundated, we had to go well up the Motorway and backtrack, and since none of us really knew where we were going (other than generalities) we wondered if our driver was lost. We did turn off onto Oxley Road however, to see a more human side of the tragedy.
I say “more human” now, looking back on my reaction to what I saw. When it was stores and industry, it wasn’t as personal as seeing those first few houses along Oxley Road and the nearby streets… Suddenly it was people’s homes, people’s lives, and it seemed somehow more real. Some of the side streets were full of equipment helping clean up, others just seemed like normal streets (albeit very dirty and messy-looking streets). Then, suddenly, just like happened on Granard Road, everything was normal again as we got to some high ground.
The roundabout at Oxley Station Road was under police control; they were stopping normal traffic from going any further up Oxley Road. The roundabout was under a couple of inches of water still. I realised that I was close to the house where a friend and former colleague used to live with his brother and a few mates. I couldn’t remember exactly where the house was, but there’s a good chance it would have gone under.
I expected that we would be dropped off at any time, but we kept driving, back into high ground now, through Oxley, then Corinda, then at Sherwood we jockeyed across onto Honour Avenue (our spirits still fairly high, as we cheered the driver through a very tight left turn onto Sherwood Road from Oxley Road). Still we drove on, leaving Sherwood and on through Graceville…
Just before the crest of the hill to get onto the Indooroopilly Bridge, at the intersection of Bridge Street, the bus stopped and the doors opened. We were in Chelmer, and the support I was pretty-much expecting to be awaiting us, to direct our efforts and so-on, was non-existent. We worked out fairly quickly that we simply had to find a place that looked like they needed help, and… help.
I took a couple of photos in that first part of the walk, but it was becoming too difficult to walk on the mud-slick streets and footpaths while looking for photo opportunities. Besides, I realised that I was turning into a “flood tourist”.
I was there to work — I put the camera away.
My sense of direction being pretty good, I wandered in the direction where I knew the river to be, expecting that closer to the river would be where most help was needed. My sense of local geography however being pretty lousy, I didn’t realise that the houses closest to the river in that part of Chelmer (near Gordon Thompson Park) were actually among the highest, and therefore the least in need. For a little while I actually wondered if I was walking in completely the wrong direction.
I found myself near another small group of volunteers and tagged a long for a little while. We encountered a house which had a lot of activity around it — but they, thanks for asking, were going okay for now. I turned one corner, then another, and found myself in Campsey Street, in front of a house where a man was pushing mud down the driveway. I found myself saying something like “you look like you need a hand”, and he replied with something like “I certainly do”.
And I worked at that little house in Campsey Street for the rest of the morning, alongside people I’d never met and likely will never meet again. Shovelling mud, pushing mud, bucketing mud, barrowing mud. There was a couple who lived nearby who just decided to go looking for somewhere to help and, like me, found that house. A young lady who I assume lived nearby, but will soon be going back to Europe where she’s doing overseas study. An off-duty policeman from Logan who might have known the owner (owners? I don’t even know that much).
There were some light moments. We had been shovelling and sweeping mud down the driveway for almost an hour when a guy with a bobcat came by. He’d found a dumped mattress and had pinched it in the bucket of the bobcat and was using it like a big squeegee to clear footpaths and driveways. In about five minutes work he’d done as much as we had done in that hour. A couple of us looked at each other, grinned a wry grin and said “we needed him an hour ago”. That would have been funny enough, but within another hour it happened again — we started clearing the path up the side of the house (where a bobcat wouldn’t be able to go) and another guy came by on a dingo (a kind-of mini bobcat) and did the same thing on that side path. Same looks, same wry grins… I make light of them, but the contribution guys like that made was excellent. They were just riding around the streets on their dingos and bobcats, looking for places that could use them, five minutes here and five minutes there. Brilliant.
It wasn’t just the ones working that I need to mention. At about morning tea time a lass came around with a Tupperware tray of slices and biscuits in one hand, and a tray of jam donuts in the other — “Sugar hit?” she asked. Too right! Earlier in the morning I’d noticed a van parked in the intersection nearby with signs saying “TEA COFFEE AND MILO, FREE FOR VOLUNTEERS”. My workmates and I eventually took a break and visited the van, which remarkably was still there, with the signs, and were offered hot tea by a couple from Lismore in NSW (who I hope had other business in Chelmer that day and didn’t, as much as I appreciated the tea, just come up all that way to make refreshing beverages for everyone).
Thankfully the sun didn’t get too strong, as it was the back of my shirt was totally drenched and I kept having to pace myself (of all the times to be out of my heart meds!).
I had taken a bucket with me, but hadn’t used it for anything more than protecting the bag I’d taken. After we’d had our cuppa the activity moved to the house next door where there was suddenly an absolute army of people (earlier there had been almost no-one) moving mud. A swarm of wheelbarrows came with them, and people were using shovels to try and get the very viscous mud out of the gutter and into the barrows. A few small round-edged buckets started to appear, but at that minute I was glad that I’d resisted the temptation to leave that square-edged bucket at home. The mud was gone from that part of the street in pretty short order with about a dozen people with shovels, small buckets and one big flat-sided bucket and the half-dozen wheelbarrows we were filling!
There was one other man working at that Campsey Street house who had also come on the council bus from Macgregor, and we’d discussed earlier in the day that neither of us knew for sure how to get home when our “shift” was finished. Between us we decided that we would just make our way back to roughly where the bus dropped us off, and we’d be collected. Well while I was scooping mud with the bucket, I started thinking about the time and wondering if I’d have to make a move. Sure enough, it was 11:25 by the time I was able to check what time it was, and my fellow council volunteer seemed to have already left. I cleaned the broom (a new broom that was definitely coming home), decided to donate the bucket (an old bucket, now covered in mud, that was likely to get much more meaningful use in Chelmer than at my house), and turned to go… but the strangest thing happened.
I didn’t want to go.
If you’ve read this blog before, you’ll have read that I experience a kind of “travellers’ regret” when I visit somewhere that has touched me (the regret part is usually the result of knowing that I may never visit there again). It happens strongest in places that have really moved me — I felt it in Lake Louise, Canada, at the Kennedy Space Center, and in the shadow of the London Eye. I felt it at Paris Gare du Lyon, and at New York’s Grand Central Terminal. It was not so strong in Newport, Rhode Island (I visited there because it’s where the Aussie yacht Australia II won the Americas Cup in 1982); very strongly at le Viaduc de Millau.
On Campsey Street, Chelmer, in my own home town, it was as strong as I’ve ever felt it. Despite the place looking like arse — no: because the place looked like arse — I needed to stay; there was so much more to do… but it was more than that even. I felt in some way connected to the other people who were helping there, even though I knew no-one’s name. I probably would have stayed, had I not arranged with Susan that she would do the afternoon shift. I tore myself away and headed back toward Honour Avenue.
I had to wait for a while, as the buses were being delayed getting through Toowong and Indooroopilly to pick us up. Then, we went on a crazy route that seemed to loop through Sherwood and Graceville a couple of times before we headed back via Coronation Drive to Macgregor. This gave me a chance to see some other things I’d only seen on TV — the Regatta Hotel looked almost normal again, and so too did the Drift restaurant.
It turned out that Susan didn’t get her turn to volunteer. Thanks to my delayed return, it was almost 1:30 before she got to the marshalling area and by then they already had more than enough people in line and didn’t want any more.
So that was my first volunteering effort. I was absolutely wrecked by it, and days later I’m still sore. The best part has been knowing that I’ve actually helped someone (maybe multiple someones) start to get some order back in their life. The kudos earned from friends and family has been a nice fringe benefit also, I have to admit. I got a SMS message of appreciation from Lord Mayor Campbell Newman today as well (okay, so it wasn’t the actual Lord Mayor — the giveaway was the words “Stop messages? reply STOP” at the end of the message — but it’s the thought that counts, right?).
Crossed Wires 