It was 10 days before Rose Hansen could get back to her Woodburn property after it disappeared under a sea of murky brown water. She knew it was going to be bad – but it was even worse than she expected.
“It was like a bomb hit,” she recounts, sitting in the back yard that in February looked more like a lake than the lush acre block she’d spent seven years cultivating. “There were fish in the back yard, swimming.”
Like most others on the street, the grandmother didn’t have insurance (“it’s just too expensive”) and her daughter, who was living with her, was a few months pregnant, so she really needed to return home.
Hansen was feeling overwhelmed, trying to break into her own home, when a car drove past.
“The man just came out and said, ‘Are you OK?’, and I said ‘No, not really’. He said, ‘Would you like some help?’ and I went, ‘Yes, please’.
“Carloads of people came … they just started taking everything out. They were from all different places … Melbourne, Brisbane, everywhere.”
The immediate response from volunteers during the 2022 flood emergency in New South Wales has been well documented. What’s less well known is how many of those same volunteers are still at it six months later.
Among the first group of helpers at Hansen’s house was 28-year-old West Australian Myles Phillips, who had been holidaying in the region when the flooding hit.
He’s been in the area ever since, save for two weeks when he returned to Perth for his nephew’s first birthday.
“I didn’t really have a plan but I thought I’ll retrace my steps from where I started with the clean-up,” he says of his return. “I popped into Rose’s … She was hauling stuff to the tip. And so I just pulled over and said, ‘Need a hand?’.”
That was a few months ago and Phillips is still hard at work helping Hansen and others, like the woman in her 80s in whose back yard he’s living in an uninsulated caravan.
The former real estate agent, who has flipped a couple of houses back home, explains he’s got enough money to get by for now and a few trades skills, so “why not?”.
“I see why people don’t want to move when people just tell the locals [to] sell up and move out. It’s not so much the place, but the people,” Phillips says.
“They’ve welcomed [me] with open arms, so it’s more of a family now … that’s what’s helped me sort of just keep going. I don’t know when I’ll stop.”
Leading the project at Hansen’s house is Dee Mould from Insulate Lismore – a group of a few dozen people she started after realising that many locals, just like her own family, were living in homes without internal walls.
Mould’s kept the process as simple as possible. There are no forms or queues – she just says when she’ll turn up with a crew and they get stuck in.
“We’re completely autonomous. Fundraising has been completely through a GoFundMe,” she says.
“We haven’t taken any money off of homeowners, we just turn up. I’d never met Rose before. No one I’ve helped have I known before the flood.”
Despite only having the full use of one of her arms, Mould was also one of the heroes out on the water rescuing people off roofs when Lismore went under the first time.
“The government are totally and utterly on the hop, and so the community’s rescued itself, fed itself and now we’re rebuilding people’s houses,” she says.
That “get there and get stuck in” energy is strong in 68-year-old Gordon Serone, who lives just outside Lismore in Bentley.
The plumber was considering retiring before the floods but now he’s run off his feet with work – a lot of which he’s doing for free for friends, family and strangers.
“Since the flood, I’ve been putting in little portable Portaloos. I helped somebody set up a Portaloo in a hay shed, where they’re living in two caravans. Quite comfy now – they’ve got hot water and a flushing toilet,” he says. “I just do odd jobs. I’m way past retirement age.”
On top of his efforts making homes livable again, Serone is also busy volunteering at the Lismore Lifeline crisis centre.
He’s been answering phones there one day a week for more than a decade, and says it’s more like a “rest day” compared with the hard physical labour he’s used to.
The inside of the Lifeline building was totally destroyed so the volunteers are now answering calls from around the country in donated demountables.
They were back up and running within a couple of months – volunteers putting their own hardship aside to be there for others.
“I come in. I don’t get to solve anything – I just listen to people’s trouble, then give them a referral to somebody or listen to their story,” Serone says.
But the value of listening can’t be overstated in a community that’s still facing seemingly insurmountable challenges.
For Hansen, she lost all of her belongings, a beloved cat, cars and her feelings of security and safety. Despite that, she says he’s experienced a “miracle”.
“It’s brought everybody closer together,” the Woodburn survivor says. “It really has been a blessing that way. Everybody talks and helps each other.”
