Recovery ongoing
During early January when Country Today takes a Christmas break, I take advantage of not being on air and hit the road to collect interviews for the program.
In previous years, I’ve attended the annual weaner cattle sales and it’s been a glorious ride in the past five years with the eastern state’s drought breaking and beef cattle prices nearly doubling.
This year, though, there was a more important job.
I felt compelled to re-visit those I interviewed during the October and November floods. The first stop was Rochester. Three months on, and the roads are still in desperate disrepair. The grey, rotting remnants of crops lie testament to the metre-high deluge that broke levy banks, swirled around town to higher ground and then inundated areas residents assumed were safe.
Gone were the mouldy sheets of plasterboard walls, trashed whitegoods, sodden carpets and furniture in front of stinking, muddy houses.
Most of the shops had reopened and the bustling Rochester Café was as busy as ever.
I had arranged to meet Rochester Business Network’s
Glenda Nichol over a cuppa.
Our conversation was constantly interrupted by phone calls from people wanting help with everything from insurance claims, finding tradies and seeking mental health services.
Glenda was keen to sell the message that Rochester was back in business.
“They said the Bendigo Bank was going to be closed possibly up to Easter … because it needed a refurb. We said, ‘Why not use the old ANZ bank as a pop-up bank?’ — so we have the Bendigo pop-up bank and they’re doing a total refurb and update and fit-out in the process,” she said.
“Home is a totally different thing. It all depends on your insurance and how you’ve navigating that. Some people have gotten lost on the bottom of a pile.
“The builder doing our job is booked out until the end of 2024. Does he want 800 people ringing him to get quotes? No.”
It was then on to Echuca and Deniliquin.
I had visited the property of
Louise and Andrew Burge, Prairie Home, five years ago.
The talk then from Louise were claims of mismanagement of the release of water from the Hume Dam, which resulted in the flooding of the Edward River in 2016.
But that was nothing compared with the three floods over nine weeks, with the worst saved until last, in November.
“My husband never wants to get in a boat again,” she said, with tinnies the only mode of transport to try to save stranded sheep.
Losses to the initial floods were low, but as the waters dispersed, the only feed was noxious weeds.
The waters were infested with worms and weakened sheep soon began to die of from the high worm burden and the curse of flystrike.
Try as they might, even with the help the State Emergency Service choppering in hay, of planes dropping faba beans for food, of neighbours and stock agents lending a hand when they could, it wasn’t possible to save the weakest sheep.
“The damage is enormous. There is just no sheep feed at all. It’s like we’ve been through the worst, catastrophic drought,” Louise said.