Back to reality

Hi everyone,

Back to reality today.  Which in practice meant spending a big chunk of the morning preparing a job application for a role as a legal officer with one of the water authorities. Maybe it'll all go somewhere. 

Went into town in the afternoon for a haircut and to go to the blood bank.  Stopped in at the TAFE College to pick up a course catalogue afterwards.  Nothing's really grabbing me enough to spend a bundle of money on it, although that's probably partly because the blues are laying into me a bit just now.

Gave the dog a long walk this evening. Beautiful light from the setting sun.  Enjoyed it as the bureau is predicting bad weather tomorrow.

Not much else to report. Feel tired and rather deflated.

NSW Deployment- day 4

Hi everyone,

Starting this post on the flight back to Melbourne.  The pilot just announced that we've now crossed back into Victoria.

The day has gone well so far.  I woke up (unintentionally) at about 5:30am and decided it was too good a chance to go for a run to pass up.  Conditions were ideal: warm and humid, but not so much as to make it at all uncomfortable.  I hadn't really thought what good terrain this would be for running: mostly flat with some gentle hills to work on.  I ran with really no plan or direction aside from being back by 6:30.

** Later **

There was some fog/mist about while I was running, but this didn't cause any issues at all.

I actually finished the run a little ahead of time, which gave me a chance to explore the Memorial Park over the road from the motel.

** Later Still **

Sorry: fell asleep and now finishing this at 5am next day!

I'm always interested to look at memorials to the South African War (1899-1902). As it happens, Lismore sent quite a number of young men to that conflict and there was indeed a memorial to them.

I can never convince myself that that war was other than unjust.  Anyway, I took some other photos of that monument which might make for a future blogpost of their own.

The bus collected Ian and me and a number of other interstate volunteers and took us up to the Gold Coast Airport. It was a pretty trip even if quite a few spots in the countryside were still pretty damp. I was a little surprised to see sugar cane being grown - it must be right on the limit of the fertile zone for that crop.

Gold Coast Airport is actually smaller than you'd think, but clean and spacious and with a quite pretty view of the hills of the hinterland.

It felt kind of good to see so many people in orange overalls walking about the airport - we'd been up there to help and hopefully we'd done so.

Lunch was at Hungry Jacks (I think I've put in a couple of kilos in this trip!) and I scrounged a copy of the Sun-Herald before we filed out to the plane.

I can't say I felt especially emotional on the flight home. Maybe some regret?  As soon as I take these overalls off I go from being an emergency worker with a useful set of skills and a passion to help and transform back into an unemployed dole-receiving potato-head.  Sigh: press on.

Back on the ground, we were greeted by an officer from Emergency Management Victoria which I thought was a nice touch.  I got a lift back up to Benalla with Ian and his wife Sue and drove back to the farm.

Dad and Michael returned from Rushworth not long after I got back - they'd been over there putting in grain. I got the feeling they weren't too happy I'd been away. Nothing I can do about that.

Felt good to have a proper shave and shower and clean up.  Back to reality I guess.

NSW Deployment - day 3C

Typing this post on the flight from the Gold Coast to Melbourne; I'll upload it when I'm back on terra firms.

After lunch on day 3 we returned to the unit and most of us were anticipating a bout of twiddling our thumbs for a few hours. It was confirmed that we'd be let go on Day 4, and I think most of us were at a loose end.  Just then a job came in of six trees having fallen and blocked a driveway up near Nimbin. It was decided to send two-and-a-half crews up to deal with it; joy of joys, the crews to go were Ballarat, Chelsea and Barwon.

We were all a bit curious as to what we'd encounter up there: Nimbin is hard-core hippie territory, and this happened to be the weekend of the MardiGrass cannabis festival (I heard one of the organisers interviewed on the local ABC radio up here; he sounded ... unfocussed).  It may or may not surprise you that on the way up we sighted one woman walking across a muddy paddock in a business shirt and gumboots and apparently not much else.  Also spotted was a heavily bearded überhippie, a hippiechick in a flowy skirt, and somebody getting a tjembe out of a car. Most people's gates were decorated with designs of rainbows and crescent moons. Oh, and on the way back we spotted a stand of teepees.  Yeah, we were in hippie country.

Be all that as it may, I can tell you it's beautiful country up there: lots of steep hills and rocks, surrounded by gorgeous fertile green forest and pasture.

When we found the farm we'd been sent out to, it was only accessible by a muddy track. After about half a kilometre we came to a strongly flowing creek with a number of downed trees in it: a phone all to the owner established that these weren't the trees he was worried about: what he was worried about was trees that were down over a crossing another kilometre on! He wasn't able to come down to help us as his leg was in a brace.

We decided that we couldn't help: even if we could safely cut up the trees blocking our path (we couldn't) we had nothing to winch them out of the way with, and only one vehicle with four-wheel-drive.  We marked the gateway with SES tape to help the local crews find it again and drove back to Lismore: the local crews will fe able to get through and take care of the job when the creek goes down.

We probably chose a good moment to head back: the creeks were still rising and one creek we'd crossed on the way out (Booerie Creek, I think) was by then a couple of inches over its bridge (we heard later that Nimbin was eventually cut off altogether).

Back at base we helped the local team straighten up their operations area and said our thank-you's and farewells.  They've been very hospitable to us.

Back at the motel, a shower and somewhat clean clothes felt heavenly.  Back to the Workers Club for a relaxed dinner and a few drinks (for me, a surprisingly light Greek pizza, red wine and red velvet cake) and generally swapping tales with other volunteers.

A little before 10pm, back to the motel for a welcome night's sleep.

NSW Deployment - day 3B

When I got back from the recce I referred to in the last post, I found that my crew (Barwon) had been sent out to a job. I was preparing for a spell of killing time when I heard that another crew (Warrnambool) was being sent out to a tree-on-house job. I put my hand up to go with them and off we went in Lismore City SES's rescue truck -

This was the scene that greeted is when we arrived.  The whole neighbourhood was houses of a similar type, clearly built for handling heat.  Once again, it made me think of Thibodaux, La., a sense amplified by the humidity.

 

 

Daniel, a member from the Sunbury Unit, began to cut back limbs near the top end of the tree with a pole saw, in order to have as much away from the house when the tree itself dropped.

 

A bit of cutting later and the tree dropped in a big way: straight down, with some outlying branches smashing the owner's Hills Hoist!  But, his house was undamaged aside from a smashed garden light and he was grateful for our work.  I was hauling cut branches away from the work zone; it felt great to exert my muscles and work up a sweat.  This is why I love SES: the sense of doing something worthwhile:

 

 

We headed back to town and went for lunch at the Workers Club again. Because I'd been feeling Thibodaux all day, I went for the fish-burger, which was as close as I could find to a po'boy.  Oh to have had some Tony Chacheres!  It was good to have lunch with a few people I hadn't spoken with much. You always meet good people in orange overalls.

 

I'll tell you the rest of the day's adventures next post.

NSW Deployment - day 3A

Hi everyone,

I'm typing these further updates of day 3 a day late: when I fell into bed last night I was knackered (and, maybe, a bit drunk).

As mentioned, there was plenty of rain overnight and plenty of water on the ground come the day. Some of it was pooling of water you could have expected: sporting fields, for example -

... and a car park that I think is designed to double as a retarding basin -

After I posted the Day 3 update I put my hand up for a recce / sightseeing tour with a member from Lismore City SES.  The river was at that point still rising:

It kept rising through the day and was steadily cutting off roads though the district as the day wore on -

This photo is a good example: the following photo was taken about midday. By the time we came back from the last job of the day the water was lapping at the bottom of the "Water on Road" sign:

There was another job to go to when we got back from the recce - I'll cover that in the next post.

NSW Deployment - day 3

Hi everyone,

Back at Lismore LHQ this morning.  We've been out to one job so far this morning - a report of water coming into a house in Goonellabah (mostly caused by the fact that there was so much muck in the gutters that there was - literally - bracken fern growing in them). We cleaned the gutters as best we could, then laid a line of sandbags to protect the garage and recommended she speak to her landlord. Not sure how the lady of the house called us: she looked like she'd only just gotten out of bed.

The rain actually cleared overnight and we woke to blue skies with some cirrus clouds.  There are a lot of sheets of water around the place this morning - some of them maybe a couple of feet deep.  Clouds are now building up again and the briefing says more rain, and also that the rivers are still rising.  So, there may still be more jobs coming our way today. A lot of the jobs the local crews are going to seem to involve cars driven into flood water.

More developments as they come

NSW Deployment - day 2A

Hi everyone,

After I finished the last entry, the day got interesting.

We were still in the "hurry up and wait" phase when lunch rolled around (for me, a Caesar salad at the Lismore Workers Club).

It continued to rain pretty well consistently, and by afternoon jobs began coming in.

I know one crew was sent to do a roof repair. My crew (Barwon) was sent to sandbag a wall at one house and some doors at a primary school where there was water coming in. It felt good to be doing something tangible, even if the jobs themselves were fairly trifling.

At about 5:20 the Victorian crews were stood down. For myself I felt a bit guilty about this as the heavy rain was starting to arrive.

Crews from NSW will work through the night and we'll take over in the morning (unless things get completely nuts overnight, in which case it's all hands to the pumps).

Back to the motel for a shower and clean-ish clothes, then back to the Workers' Club for dinner. Rain was (and is) still falling very heavily; at least it makes things beautiful in a way.

I noticed that the drainage channels were building up through the day.  I'm sure they must be overflowing by now.  Hopefully the folks in low lying areas hold up as best they can.

More tomorrow.