FRIDGIES TO THE RESCUE

A wall of water hit the town of Eugowra at 9am on Monday, November 14, 2022.

No one was expecting the scale of devastation, and the town of about 780 residents was left shattered. Two lives were lost in the flash flooding. Houses were literally washed away, and many were moved off their foundations. What was left was uninhabitable. People lost everything –lives were destroyed.

David Conyers, a TAFE teacher from Bathurst went to help. His girlfriend – a volunteer with Bathurst Daybreak Rotary in conjunction with team leaders from Orange Daybreak Rotary and other service organisations – was providing daily meals for the townspeople left stranded at the caravan park, and noted that all the fridges there were running hot.

She asked Conyers, a refrigeration mechanic by trade, if he could take a look.

“It just exploded from there,” says Conyers. And the roots of Fridgy’s 4 Eugowra were planted.

Disaster Strikes

Eugowra resident Tim Cheney has gone to hell and back since the floods. He not only tragically lost his girlfriend, but his 84-year-old mother only narrowly survived after “going under” several times, swallowing dirty water as she sought sanctuary in her kitchen. When she was eventually rescued she spent weeks in hospital.

“I’d been up since 5am sandbagging houses around our street,” Cheney recalls. “When I saw water coming across the paddocks, I checked on Mum and she was as calm as can be – the water was probably only a foot deep then.

“So I bolted back to my house, because my dog was locked up in there. Then all hell broke loose. Before I knew it, my dog and everything was washed away.”

In the midst of the chaos, his sister was on the phone crying, and his girlfriend called to say she was stuck in her ute and couldn’t get out.

“Then the phones died. We had no power, no phones, and it was four hours before I could wade across to Mum’s.”

When he got there, debris from the canola fields was piled all around the house, up to the roof.

“I found Mum in the kitchen,” he says. “She’d been in there in the water the whole night. Her front windows had blown in, the back windows had blown out, and she had water up to her chest because she couldn’t climb onto anything.”

When the flood finally receded, everything was gone. Either ruined by water or washed away. Cheney and his mother, like so many others, were eventually evacuated from what was left of their homes and ended up renting a house in the nearby town of Parkes.

After The Flood

Cheney began the gargantuan clean-up task at his own house, and his air conditioning units had not fared well.

“Then this bloke just knocked on my door and said ‘Do you want me to look at your air conditioner?’

That bloke was David Conyers.

“He pulled the cover off and said, ‘Well, it’s never going to work again’. He then said, ‘do you know anyone else who needs aircon?’

“Mum had recently paid a lot for a new unit … he looked at that and said, ‘she’s a goner’, then … ‘anyone else?’”

And so Conyers worked his way around the town with Cheney, going from house to house and knocking on doors.

“Before we knew it we’d looked at about 20 houses and every house had a split system or wall unit that had been ruined,” Cheney says.

Conyers started sourcing free air conditioners, but they knew they couldn’t just give everyone

A Shock To The System

Although Conyers has seen 25 different tradies come through to help, as well as a bunch of “retired guys”, he’s still desperate for installers.

“I know a lot of people in the industry, but I don’t like to overtax them because I’ve been in the trade and I know what it’s like. For someone to give up a Saturday – or even a week – when they’re already working a 50–60-hour week is huge.”

Conyers has been able to conscript a few of his TAFE students from Bathurst, where he teaches air conditioning and refrigeration.

“I’ve had a few come out to install, so not only did they help out, but it’s also a good community exercise for them as well as learning another aspect of their trade.”

Nick Grabianski is one of the many who came to help. The Dubbo-based student, already an electrician by trade, has been travelling to Bathurst every six weeks for the past two years to do the air conditioning and refrigeration course.

“I heard about the flood on the news and had a few words with David, who was actively looking for people,” he says. “I ended up being one of about 20 people who went to help.” a new system, so he and Cheney agreed that night to set some parameters. First, they looked to help the aged and families with small children. As if the situation for everyone weren’t bad enough, the heat was unbearable.

Grabianski spent a day with Conyers, replacing a ducted unit in a home. A trade assistant from the Kiwi Disaster Relief team gave a hand with whatever else was needed.

“When I got there I couldn’t believe it,” Grabianski says. “There were houses that had actually been lifted up and thrown into other people’s backyards, and directly next to where we were working a house had been swept away.

An avalanche of goodwill followed. People had their houses stripped, Gyprocked, painted, ceilings repaired, floorboards sanded and coated by volunteers; furniture, kitchens and electrical items were donated from a huge number of supporters. Cheney says he cannot thank enough the hordes of people who knocked on his door offering all kinds of help, who all had the exactly the skills he needed to make his and many others’ homes habitable again.

“Dave managed to get me a reconditioned Daikin the same size as the one I lost, so I was really lucky,” he said. His was the tip of the iceberg.

Conyers started by trying to track down second-hand units, and people also wanted to donate them.

“Then Rotary approached me and pledged $35,000 and Beijer Ref contacted me offering air conditioners for about half of what they usually cost.

“So that’s when I set up Fridgy’s 4 Eugowra,” Conyers says. “It was where anyone who wanted to contribute labour or equipment could register to come and help.

“Beijer Ref were amazing, and that $35,000 I got from Rotary bought us 30 brand-new units which we’ve been installing over the last couple of weeks. All at no cost to the customer.”

“People have basically got nothing left. The whole experience was a shock to the system, and the house I was working on had already essentially been cleaned up.”

Essential Services

The local butcher was another business that was hard hit.

“This butcher has won state awards for his sausages, out in the middle of nowhere, and his cooler went underwater,” Conyers says. “I contacted a company in Sydney – Star East Refrigeration – and they gave me a brand-new sealed unit at a really good price. So now he’s got a new cooler and two-door glass fridge to display his stuff. A town like that needs a butcher shop and not have to drive for miles to the next town to get their meat.”

While Conyers was doing the coolroom installation, a truckie who had driven all the way down from Narrandera came in and asked when the shop was going to open again.

“I said ‘Mate, it’s just been flooded, it’s going to take a while’. So then he told me he’s been driving trucks through Eugowra for 30 years and buying what he said were the best sausages in Australia!”

The supermarket has also reopened after having a $10,000 coolroom donated by a Bathurst business – another example of what Conyers describes as overwhelming generosity.

A young man from Sydney who had bought three houses as an investment but had two of them wash away was also helped out by Bathurst businesses.

“He was probably the hardest hit, but he came up from Sydney and donated two days of his time to help put in aircons,” says Conyers. “I put out a plea to help this bloke and people in my town said, ‘What do you need?’. I got everything I asked for: insulation, Gyprock, a clothes dryer, hotplate and hot water system.”

Early on in the clean-up, local contractor Clews Refrigeration together with Actrol Bathurst donated 10 new aircon units and wall brackets to the town. Every unit is now installed 1.5m above the ground.

“I just can’t thank the people of Bathurst enough,” says Conyers. “Every day, someone’s donated something: furniture, fridges, washing machines, dishwashers, TVs.

“I had a lady just ring and donate $1,000 for Gyprock. Schneider Electrical kicked in nearly $10,000 worth of much-needed electrical gear including about 300 power points and circuit breakers. Clipsal and HPM have donated probably one thousand power points. Bunnings has donated a lot of electrical cables, fittings and Gyprock. I’ve even had small businesses saying, ‘What do you need?’.

“One told me to make a list of what I needed and put about $2,000 worth of gear on his business account. He just paid for it!

“Former Wollongong, now Orange-based company Standard Supply Company (Plaztec) also donated a pallet of cover duct, brackets and fittings.”

A Town Says Thankyou

Eugowra residents are so grateful for the help that they have contributed to a fund to pay for all the volunteers’ meals: breakfast, lunch and dinner.

“The people here had no warning of the flood and no time," says Conyers. "Eight minutes and next thing they had 1.5m of water through their town.

“Every time we go to the pub there there’s 10 beers put down in front of us. We’re pretty popular! But I bet there’s never been anywhere in Australia before where 125 air conditioners have been installed for free!”

Despite his ordeal and his loss, Cheney feels “very blessed” to have met Dave, and wants to get more help for him and the work he is doing.

Fridgy Angels

Kon Athanasiades is one of many who gave up his valuable work time and money to help, and donated air conditioners.

Based in Melbourne, the sole trader who specialises in domestic air conditioning possibly travelled the furthest – about a nine-hour drive for him.

He came across the plea for help at Eugowra on Facebook.

“It said a lot of people were without homes, with people still living in caravans … And it was pretty hot every day back then, so I decided to help,” says Athanasiades.

“We all have 365 days in a year to make money, so what’s a week in the big scheme of things?”

He was in Eugowra in the last week of January 2022, two months after the flood.

“A lot of guys were coming and going, mostly from the Bathurst area,” he says. “I was expecting to see a lot of debris still around but it had mostly been cleaned up.

“But what I did see was houses without plaster, houses with holes in the sides of them, houses moved back from their foundations … One install I did had debris on the inside of the flyscreen door higher than me, and it was on the inside of all the houses. It was wild to see. Big forces of nature.”

Everyone worked to a plan, he said. All donated new air conditioners went to homes housing the elderly or new-born babies.

“Guys came from Sydney, Bathurst, Canberra, and there were a whole bunch of wholesalers who were giving pretty big discounts on units as well.

“There were a couple of good heads down there.

I’m glad I went.” ■

“If we can get any installers just to give up one or two days that would be a huge help … We can always put them up at the showgrounds and feed them.” And the townspeople are already well-practised in that – in expressing their gratitude.

“Dave’s a bit of a celebrity here,” Cheney said. “I don’t think he’s had to buy a beer at the club for a while.” ■

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