Good mob in hard times
SYDNEY- CENTRIC columnist Miranda Devine is having another shot at Innisfail and Queensland over our “whinging dependency” on help and welfare which apparently manifested in the aftermath of Cyclone Larry in 2006.
Alert readers might recall that after one woman whinged about a lack of immediate help after the cyclone, Ms Devine assumed everyone in the cyclone zone was a whingeing cry baby. She has resurrected it all again in the wake of the NSW storms, praising the stoicism of the people of the Hunter Valley.
Guess what? Not one of them complained about the SES or the police or anything the authorities did or didn’t do. They were all so brave and steadfast it made you just want to, well, write a column about it. Ha ha. What a cracker.
Well, allow me to reaffirm once again that the people of Innisfail, Babinda, El Arish, Silkwood, Bingil Bay, Mission Beach, Millaa Millaa, Malanda, Tinaroo, Kairi and Tolga were brave and steadfast after Larry as well. I know, because I was there.
I was in the Robert Johnstone Motel with several others when it was blown down around us. Yes, there were probably two or three ferals in the town or out in the countryside after the cyclone having a whinge – there usually are wherever you go – but in the days and weeks afterwards during which I spoke to dozens of people spread out over this large geographic area, I can only remember speaking to one lot of whingers.
Yep, they were ferals, drinking beer and living rough in the jungle who wanted the government to come and help them. They were incapable of doing anything for themselves. I saw people who had their homes blown down around them who thought they were going to die and were in shock. They weren’t whingeing. The same goes for Cyclone Yasi in 2011. I was in the cyclone shelter in Tully during Yasi. When we emerged at dawn and went out and saw that the town had been flattened and started talking to people, there were no whingers. Only people glad to be alive.
Months later with so many people in Cardwell and elsewhere still living in car ports and cooking on camping stoves, there were still no whingers. People complained about insurance companies and how long it was taking to process claims so that their houses could be rebuilt.
They had a right to complain because the insurance companies treated them badly. Ms Devine might have fun stoking the fires of division, but really, it’s not much different wherever you go in Australia.
I wasn’t in NSW for the recent floods, but from my experience, whether it’s Innisfail after Larry, or Cardwell and Tully after Yasi, or the Lockyer Valley and Brisbane after the 2011 floods or the Queensland Gulf Country after the 2009 floods or the Yarra Valley, Marysville and Kinglake after the 2009 Victorian bushfires, you will find people are people wherever you go.
Nearly all of them are brave and humble in the aftermath of these events. Bravery and humility are always the admirable qualities which come to the fore in people after fires, floods and cyclones.
You can turn over a rock just about anywhere and find a whinger. But, why bother when there are so many good, strong people out there who just walk out of their firegutted, flood- ravaged or cyclone- battered homes and quietly get on with the job of rebuilding their lives? No one community in Australia has exclusive rights to stoicism.
Hold on clean- up
THE blackened and twisted iron and other charred remains of what used to be Gannon’s Hotel in Julia Creek’s main street is still there and it could be some time before it is cleaned up. It was hoped the site might have been cleared for the Dirt n Dust festival held over April 17- 19. Apparently the presence of asbestos is holding up the clean- up.
One for the birds
STONE throwing, glass houses and all that. One of the ABC news reports about the Anzac Day dawn service on The Strand in Townsville mentioned the “cry of sea birds” greeting the dawn as the Last Post was sounded. Well I may not be a rocket scientist or a diesel fitter, but I do know the difference between a lorikeet and a seagull, a lorikeet and a petrel and a lorikeet and an albatross. Those birds that greeted the dawn and flew over the cenotaph down there on Saturday morning were lorikeets.
Our duty to them
TOWNSVILLE Mayor Jenny Hill made a moving speech at the dawn service on The Strand. She told a simple, but heartfelt story about the three Keane brothers from Townsville who enlisted in World War I. One brother died of an illness just before the end of the war. She told me after the service that the other two brothers never settled when they returned home from the front. Like so many from the Great War, they were probably suffering “shell shock”. Cr Hill said it was a reminder to us all that every Australian government should be held to account when it came to looking after soldiers, sailors and airmen when they return from war zones.