When the skies and the rivers are at war
Our story is only one small part of a larger one. It is not the most tragic one, it is not the saddest either. It is a story that has been lived by many people, and will be experienced by many more. And this why I want to talk about it. Because it is not the saddest one and because this will happen more frequently and more violently.
And each and every time, it will be unprecedented. It will set a new record and take us by surprise. We will doom scroll the images and videos of devastation, sensing the uneasy feeling of deja-vu — was it from a dream or from yesterday. When more roofs will pop out of brown waters, when people will be staring at what used to be a street and when the screams of drowning animals will haunt the silence of desolation. Was it a movie or the news. Was it here or there. Dare we stare at it or close it. I would like, again, to stare at it.
After it happened, for a few days, I got obsessed with the suitcase we left in the bedroom. I could see myself closing it diligently and putting on the higher level of the room — the bed. In the middle of the misery around us, I felt guilty about missing that suitcase and struggled to understand this feeling. I have lost many bags in my life but never got caught that way in a sense of loss. That bag has been prepared when, a light in our hearts, my partner and I were about to flight to the Northern Rivers to get engaged. In that bag, there were no valuables. Only memories. It had the hat I received for one of our anniversaries, my favourite dresses and tee-shirts I had taken with me from Belgium a long time ago. My mind was set on the flooded memories, as if they were a part of us and belonged to a moment we couldn’t go back to.
The water must have touched the suitcase at midnight. I didn’t see it, but its level was by then at around half a meter above the ground and was infiltrating the place. From the 3-meters high roof, we were witnessing, hour after hour, that level rising, the engulfment of our accommodation and the worst floods Woodburn had ever experienced.
Five hours earlier, after we had jumped on a roof made of corrugated plastic, someone on the phone had told us to wait until the following morning for rescue, as the conditions were too dangerous for volunteers to come and find us.
My heart beat irregularly and I struggled catching my breath. By then, the water had risen suddenly around us. The river, on one side, was touching the house and joining the other side where, a few hours earlier, there were only endless fields crossed by beautiful cows. We had joked the day before about how much I loved cows and liked to scream “meuuuh” at them whenever I crossed their paths. From the darkness, these cows were begging for help with screams and I use the word “screams” because there are no other words to describe their desolation, and, through the night, these screams pierced an empty sky and I was fearing the moment where we would not hear them anymore.
When the water infiltrated the suitcase and started to soak its inside, I felt asleep for twenty minutes, covered by a tarp and the arm of my partner who I had proposed to two days ago. In a blue world, I felt asleep and in my dreams, for a brief moment, I thought we were somewhere else. Yesterday, when we woke up and walked in the street, in a world we knew the limits of; when locals said it wouldn’t go beyond the level of 1974. Yesterday, on my bed. Yesterday, solid and real yesterday.
I woke up suddenly and noticed the water had risen again. We could only see the roof of the car and vegetation had clotted around us with their leaves staring at our numbed expressions. The cows were still dying and the sky our agony was dark and the night was painfully still and slow.
At 6am, two lights called us and we raised our hands with our phones. Locals who had already lost everything came to save us. When we sat on the boat, a dog came at me put his head and paws on my knees. At the front, a man called Ian lightened the dark waters to spot hazards. On our right, more people were waiting for rescue on the second level of their house which, in just a few hours, has been transformed in the ground floor. Like us, they would have had received the day before, at 5pm, a text to evacuate their place immediately and, like us, it would already have been too late by then. They might also have had hopes, several times in the night, that the river would have peaked at 5.30 meters, and then 5.80, 6.30, 6.45, 6.70, 7, and taken us in a doom of ever-changing predictions where this had became the land where the water never stops rising.
As we crossed the town in a boat, electrical cables were only one or two meters above the water. Through the trees, roofs emerged from the floods water and, in silence, we all witnessed the froth of a town, where only our imagination could recreate life and its shadow.
After being rescued to the bridge and then the primary school, we slept for an hour on the floor of a classroom, surrounded by pupils names written in all the colours, and maps, and drawings. In the same room, families were listing their loss, which would be summed up by what they hadn’t lost. This bag and everything else was lost. The bag with all they had decided to save in seconds. Everything had been taken by the ever-rising waters and most of the houses would not be insured, because, for more of the residents, the insurance would have cost two to three months of salary.
And they would wait and see what they could clean. And they would repeat to each others how they tried to save what they cherish. How they hanged the bags to the ceilings. How they hid it in the roof. One opened her bag to us and showed us her modem, her tissues box and the ashes of her son. In these houses, there were the marks of their growing kids on the walls, the clothes of those who died and the picture of faces they could not remember.
Through the following days, local volunteers were on the forefront of the catastrophe. We were offered clothes and tooth brushes, and a bed where people used to dance. Stuffed animals were offered at children wandering in the large room where people lied in their bed and cried without a sound.
At the coffee and tea area, volunteers would stand next to the hot water and serve us what we needed. If I tried to do it myself, they wouldn’t let me as they were here to help. Because they wanted to help. Because they had to help. Because help was the only way to make sense of any of this. Like all of us on our beds, they had lost their sleep. They were looking at the weather, the water levels and the food supplies. The world was forever shaken, the skies and the rivers were still at war.
In the evening, when everyone would be in their beds made of inflatable mattresses and donated blankets, I would think about that suitcase underwater. I thought about the joy and the lightness that carried us when we packed it, and how small this was, and how foreign that moment felt. Especially, back then, I was still living in a world made of certainties where the weather and the rains are predictable, and where we understand how cataclysms could hit us.
The communities had given everything to everyone. No matter who you were, where you came from, they recreated safety for many. When they feared for their loved ones, they came to rescue strangers. They put their lives on the frontline when all hopes had been lost for these local communities.
My partner and I were the lucky ones. We have a home. Over there, the situation in these areas is desperate and community support is crucial, as the prevention and resilience in Australian communities. This story is small and there will be more of them. So let’s keep supporting each others and especially the most vulnerable ones.
There is still a lot of work ahead and these communities still need our help. Please consider reaching out to them or go to donations platforms like Givit, where you can buy vouchers for families who have lost everything.
