A WALLOON charity has lost more than $80,000 of furniture and clothing destined for the homes of domestic violence victims.
The Restart charity shed was flooded by 1.3 metres of muddy water when the Bremer River broke its banks and inundated the container which was chock-full of furniture at the bottom of their yard.
Restart’s Tara Budgen and Jason Smith have now spent the past 10 days trying to salvage what little they still could from the container, full of foul-smelling, sodden items.
They prioritised the clean-up of the container even before paying attention to their own belongings that were affected.
The charity has lost furniture, bedding, electrical appliances, and baby gear destined for domestic violence survivors and the homeless whose homes are provided by the government but are unfurnished.
The community has rallied to support them, and the council’s waste management staff have helped with the removal and disposal of damaged items.
Tara wanted to know why the charity had not received any emergency text messages warning them the river was about to flood.
She said their flood barriers and sandbags proved hopeless as water washed into the charity’s property around 8am on Monday.
“It was almost two years to the day when we flooded in 2022,” Tara said.
“We had a bad feeling about what might have been coming and tried to move as much as we could before the floods.
“We had started prepping and moving stuff as much as soon as we could and had secured a storage shed away from here, but unfortunately, we only had one day before they shut us out of the storage shed because of the cyclone.
“We couldn’t get anything else out, although we saved a few fridges and washing machines, we lost a lot more than we saved though.
“The personal impact of losing items we had carefully selected for other people to make their homes nice has been very traumatic.”
She said insurance companies would not provide flood damage cover.
The couple want to leave their rental but explained the housing crisis has locked them out of the market.
Restart receives no funding from the government or grants and makes money only from donations and selling furniture through its online shop.
The pair self-fund the charity from their own home in Walloon’s Kingsley Street.
The pair, who has been operating the charity for about eight years, self-funds costs to the tune of $200,000 a year.
Jason says he puts in more than 100 hours a week and Tara gives 70 hours, meaning they get paid around $3 an hour and they work every day of every week, with two days’ break each year.
“People ask how on earth we are managing to deal with so much loss,” Tara said.
“We don’t have time to fall apart, we are dealing with this with humour.
“Everyone’s walking into our shed and going, oh my, that stinks.
“I cannot smell the stench. My brain has blocked it out.”
Contact Restart at https://restartseq.com.au/about-us.html#/.
