A lucky country
I WAS standing in centimetres deep, slimy, smelly mud on the verandah of a home above the ripped and torn, cliff-like banks of the Bremer River in Ipswich.
Looking across to the other side of the brown, churning waterway, I remember wondering, somewhat idiotically, how there could be so much freshwater in the world – how was it possible for the floodwaters to have reached so high?
It was early in 1974. Only the day before, I was busy worrying what clothes one should wear as a university student – all those years in school uniforms behind me, I wanted to make an impression.
A first world problem and one my mum decided was not worthy of too much thought.
She had volunteered to help clean up flood devastated homes in Ipswich and had volunteered me too … “It will be good for you Wendy, to think about something other than clothes!” was her comment.
While the flood had washed across our farmland taking that season’s income with it, to me it was really nothing much more than a big flood. Living on a high slope above the creek that ran through the farm, our home was isolated from damage and for my sister, brother and I, floods meant time off school (the school bus couldn’t get through to the pick up points) and they also meant fun.
Below our house, running parallel to the creek, was a grassy gully which filled with overflow from the creek at one end during a flood. The water would rush along the gully before again reconnecting with the creek much further down.
We’d flatten cardboard cartons, take them down to the flooded gully and use them as body boards. Fun for us until we were caught by mum or dad.
But back in 1974 on that Ipswich verandah, for the first time I understood that floods could mean fear and loss and nightmares filled with the stink of mud and rotting vegetation and decisions about what could not be salvaged and what could be saved … and taking account of what was lost, only realising the true extent as the weeks passed.
So, mum and I cleaned as well as we could the houses we were assigned and each night, we returned to our home on the farm to breathe in fresh air and an understanding that our good fortune in living there was a mere happenchance of birth.
It was the other end of the same year that another disaster caused an equal epiphany.
It must be remembered that the true extent of natural disasters was rarely realised back then, except by the people who had to live through them.
Our news came via the newspapers, the ABC on the radio and the nightly news programs on a blurry black and white TV set.
And in the case of Cyclone Tracy which devastated Darwin early on Christmas morning 1974, it wasn’t until the next day that we understood that something truly dreadful had happened.
Even then, not a lot of detail was known except that people had died, homes had been damaged and the government was trying to get help to them.
My memory is of some days later, opening the newspaper to read the detail, see the pictures and learn the death toll.
It brought my teenage mind to a standstill … “How could so many people die!” … “People don’t die like that in Australia!” … “Sure it was a cyclone, but we have cyclones every year!”
But winds that gust up to 217km/hour show no pity when it comes to man, beast and man-made.
This year we mark the 50th anniversary of those two disasters.
We acknowledge the extent of the disasters and the extent of the gifts of time and energy given by the recognised, and the unrecognised, heroes who went to help – not just for a few days but for weeks and sometimes months – they are the people who underpin Australia’s reputation as a ‘lucky country’.
