On the sidewalk in front of the local music shop in Mullumbimby, two women wipe down ukuleles and violins and place them carefully atop their canvas cases to dry. A parade of a hundred or more instruments – drums, tambourines, cellos, xylophones – line the footpath and back alley, taking advantage of the day’s sunny weather.
The women, who are flood volunteers like so many of the clean-up workers in the local stores, stop occasionally to talk to locals who manoeuvre their way around the instruments with great care. As important as clearing out the moisture and the mould, hearing is healing. Everyone has a story – their own or someone else’s.
Someone’s 70-year-old neighbour nearly drowned, clinging alone and terrified on the roof of her house for hours when the storm first hit and the town lost power and phone service.
Some families are sleeping on concrete floors, refusing to leave their homes. Hundreds of other newly homeless adults and children are sleeping on donated and makeshift mattresses in the local community hall. Nobody has been able to reach others stranded in a damaged road – by either phone or vehicle.
Wifi, mobile phones and all payments platforms are down here, and in every store and petrol station from here through to Byron Bay, it’s cash only. For any stores lucky enough to have stock left to trade, it’s a tough hustle, with clothing or hardware competing in a cash-starved town with basic food and medicine. But the open stores are a hopeful sign, a signal that some things were preserved in this record flooding disaster.
The rainstorm may have past, but in its wake is layers of mud and dust.
“The worst part is afterwards,” my neighbour tells me. After the rain comes the mould and damp, gastro and skin infections along with mosquitos and leeches, she says matter of factly. “Boil all your water and avoid breathing the dust – it’s toxic.”
A farmer’s daughter, she’s seen flooding and rain damage many times. “Never like this,” she says. “I spoke to someone who has been living here 70 years yesterday – they’ve never seen flooding like this in all their days.”
I’m a blow-in from Sydney and I’ve been local for a pandemic year. Long enough to know even through lockdowns that the storekeepers and their teams are the beating heart of this town.
When the community needs help, this town excels. There’s a steady bustle of movement that’s almost cheerful. Nobody has handed out instructions; people seem to instinctively know what to do, what to say, who to speak to.
When I ask how I can help, the team at the local civic centre send me inside for a mop and bucket. “Grab some clean-up equipment and find someone who needs help.”
Before I get a foot inside, the woman running the inside operation steps into my path, eyeing me suspiciously.
It’s my first day back in town – two days after the deluge, when the water at the base of my street stops looking like a fast-moving river. We were lucky to be on a hill and our house is fine. Buying high was no accident. After retreating from Sydney after the recent bushfires with one eye on climate change, I was taking few chances with the weather.
I’ve found it hard to fit in here – especially in Covid. And even harder to understand what motivates the community. The true locals. All this comes rushing up at me as I stare into the community hall organiser’s face.
“It’s just we have so little cleaning equipment,” she explains.
“Oh, I see,” relieved it’s not me.
“Why don’t you walk around and see if you can find someone who needs help, then come back?” she says.
I wander the main street peering into stores – trying to find someone who needs a hand. Most people are sweeping and sorting. Half of their goods are on the street. The local charity shop has stripped its contents bare and teams of people are sweeping inches of mud off the concrete floors and into the gutters where it will eventually turn to dust.
Most homes have turned the insides of their houses on to the pavements. Mattresses, sofas, toys, children’s car seats, carpets and play equipment condemned to a premature grave. It’s like the world’s biggest rubbish day. I wonder about how the council will deal with all the toxic waste.
“For sale” signs hang forlornly off the front of a couple of houses. In more optimistic times, these properties would have cashed in on the race to regional living. Now they are swamp sites, with risk stamped across them.
The next day, I come back to town to try again. On the whiteboard, beneath the words “what we really need” are the words “gumboots, gumboots, gumboots and children’s aspirin”.
I have those things. All of them. I race home to collect the supplies. Back at the hall, it is a storehouse worthy of a war effort. I watch the hum of industry inside – there are dozens of workers moving around the piles of supplies. There is beauty in the chaos.
A tired-looking young mother sits in her car outside the council office. The car is packed with bedding and clothing. The song Don’t Worry Be Happy blares from her car stereo. She sings along with her son. I wonder how many times she’s played it that day. We catch each other’s eye and smile. I have a daughter and I understand the desire to keep children’s anxiety at bay during these times.
Mullumbimby is the biggest little town in Australia – at least that’s what the sign boasts when you drive in. Population 3,600 and swelling as a result of people like me moving here from the suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne. The wreckage affects every resident and business owner. Nobody’s lives will be the same.
Driving home, I resolve to return to see what the community sign says they need tomorrow. And the day after that. Until the sign disappears.
The clean-up effort will take months. Some damage can’t be fixed.
“This flood effort is a marathon not a sprint,” a local community leader posted on his Facebook page at the start of the flooding – back when we had internet connection and power.
Mullumbimby is the kind of town you want to be part of when there’s a crisis. And with climate change hot on Covid’s heels, there will be many more of these. Here and across the country.
• Fleur Brown is a Mullumbimby resident
• An longer version of this article was first published here and is republished with permission of the author
