It’s been a difficult two weeks – and I was in a position that was so much easier than many of the people who live in this small town in the Far North of Queensland.

Two weeks ago, a monsoon trough met a tropical low in the Coral Sea.  It almost sounds like a fairy tale – the kind where the beautiful princess meets a handsome prince and they dance around each other before falling madly in love.  But that monsoon and the tropical low just clashed together and the ‘dance’ was more akin to Poseidon smashing his trident into the earth and marking a vast area where these two Titans could fight it out.

The result was rain.  Over 2,000mm of rain in some places, in a matter of days, and many of the homes in these places were flooded right up to their roof tops.  Homes were filled with mud; precious personal items destroyed; there has even been loss of life. 

This little town I call home straddles the only road that travels up the north coast of Queensland – 1,679km.  That one road, known as the Bruce Highway, is, once it leaves Brisbane and the more populated areas of the South East of Queensland,  just like a normal street with one lane of traffic in either direction.  I actually live on that street and I can cross it in less than 50 steps.  Yet this is the main access for many towns, small and large, for the delivery of food and other supplies.  Without the Bruce Highway, we don’t get essential supplies – it’s that simple, and for the past two weeks, the Bruce has been inaccessible due to flooding and bridges collapsing into the water.    

The rescue teams have been awesome.  Army, Fire and Rescue, State Emergency Services, a whole mob of electricians  and more.  Helicopters hauling people, equipment, food, came to Cairns and other places affected by the flooding.  And work began.  Hundreds of trucks spent days parked on the edge of the road waiting for the army to build a pontoon to get them over a washed out bridge so they could deliver vital supplies.  And then they waited many more days to be able to drive their empty trucks home.  These truckies, the absolutely life blood that flows through the one long artery of Queensland have done it tough.  Living in their trucks, loosing money because a truck that doesn’t travel doesn’t earn a living, these belong to the list of heroes of this tale.

Yesterday, the flooding went down enough for the trucks to move – with care.  Hundreds upon hundreds of huge double-length semi-trailers finally got to either deliver their goods or start the journey home.

I was lucky.  Man!  Was I ever.  I evacuated for two days and when I returned I discovered that just one small room, that is on a slightly lower level than the rest of the house had been flooded.  The floor was filled with mud.  We had been warned that the water and the mud was possibly toxic – likely to have sewerage, melioidosis, and toxoplasmosis.  The SES hosed it all out for me and also carried a sofa that that had been inundated by that toxic fluid out for garbage collection.

The tiny supermarket, which had been filled with empty shelves yesterday, today had fruit and vegetables.  And eggs.  And bread.  I bought some lettuce and some strawberries; and  some teabags – just in time because I only had four left!  I did cause a few turned heads as I walked through the supermarket because most of my face is covered in medical dressings and what you can see is swollen and has some very lurid purple and yellow colouration.  I had tripped over some debris in the garden and had landed on my nose.  It’s probably broken, but I have to wait until next week to get a CT scan – if the flooding doesn’t return.

 

Now it’s time to look forward and I do so with a wonderfully uplifted heart.  I have watched the young people of this town get stuck in with helping people.  I have heard of people opening their homes to strangers so that they would have a place to sleep.  I have heard of people who still had food and electricity, making meals for those who didn’t.  The swimming pool opened its doors to provide showers and food.  People who have stuff, donated it to those who don’t. 

I have seen total strangers who came here, often by helicopter, to help the locals as we have fought to find a way to deal with so much loss and anguish.  There is financial help, physical help, emotional help.  I’m an older person and due to various things am considered ‘vulnerable’;  I was in tears.  I was in tears for me – for the fears I had held, but also for the beauty of so much giving and receiving that I was seeing. 

When we look at world happenings – as shown to us through various media formats – we mainly see the hard stuff.  The stuff that frightens, worries, adds to the loads we already carry.  How often do we see the kindness, the sharing, the supportive hugs that humans can give to each other?  It is beautiful – and it is so sad that we really only see this in times of disaster.

I’ve lived a long and varied life which held many difficulties and hurdles to cross, and every time I have hit rock-bottom for some reason, there has been someone there to help me back up.  I often haven’t recognised that person.  Sometimes it’s just been a compassionate smile or a kind word.  Sometimes, advice I haven’t always taken.  It’s been people who have literally picked me up off the floor.  It’s been friends, neighbours, strangers.  And as I look back over the past two weeks, I can see that almost every human will help another person if they are able.  It’s what we do.  We don’t need to shout out to the world about the help we give to someone, because this is what is is to be human.  Love isn’t a grand drama – it’s a smile that one person buying eggs in the supermarket gives to a stranger doing the same thing, who just happens to have their face all bashed up.  That smile says “It’s ok.  You’ve got this.”

And the person with the bashed up face – me in in this case – smiles back and says, “Isn’t it great to see eggs back on the shelves?”  And neither of us even blink at the $10.00 a dozen price tag.  We know what it took to get those eggs onto the supermarket shelves.  And we are grateful.