A time of thanks

By Jo Kennett

IT’S ONE year on from the devastating floods and when a local woman put up a ‘thank you’ post on social media to all the helpers and rescuers, the response was overwhelming.

Louise Togo and her daughter Alyce had to be rescued from their Wommin Bay Road home in Chinderah last year, and she posted her thanks online as the anniversary approached.

“What inspired me the most was seeing the preview of the Tinnie Heroes film trailer. We had so many tinnie heroes in Kingscliff, Chinderah, Fingal and surrounds,” Louise told The Weekly.

“I wanted to give people the opportunity to say their thanks and what better way to do it than by sharing my own.

“Last year I watched our community ferrying people back and forth for hours. I walked down to the river and spoke to my neighbours who had assured me the water had never come up this far, but it did.

“It was so overwhelming, but what remained constant was the volunteers helping people evacuate.”

Louise had already lost everything in the 2017 flood and said it was “hard and emotional” to go through it a second time. She thinks seeing the community banding together really helped people to leave.

“I watched neighbours, local business owners, off-duty policemen and many locals begin the heartbreaking task of ferrying people to safety,” she said in her post on Kingscliff Happenings.

“Realising help wasn’t coming, I watched community volunteers begin to coordinate rescues and people showing up to help.

“Canoes, SUPs, tinnies, boats and jet skis, went back and forth ferrying the elderly, the bedridden, people who were stuck and people like me, who didn’t want to leave but had no choice.

“As the rain got heavier it didn’t deter the mammoth efforts of our local heroes risking their own lives and protecting their own homes and families to save people.”

Louise watched rescuers ferry and walk people through to safety “hour after hour”.

“Through all our tears and heartache you continued to help,” Louise wrote.

“They say not all heroes wear capes. They don’t, they wear normal clothes, drenched from the rain working humbly and tirelessly to protect the community we love.

“So from me, and to the man who rescued Alyce and I, we say truly from the bottom of our hearts, thank you.”

Many locals added their thanks to rescuers, those who took them to the evacuation centres and that manned them, the ‘mud army’ who provided critical physical and emotional support, and those who provided supplies and support to help them rebuild their lives after the floods.

“The worst of mother nature but the best of humanity all in one,” one woman wrote.

While some locals were physically unable to help with the clean-up, Louise was one of many who were first to help out.

“I started volunteering on the Monday,” she told The Weekly last year.

“My cousin Leweena Williams (CEO of the Tweed Byron Local Aboriginal Land Council) and a lot of Fingal people that work at the Land Council were going around houses at Fingal and Chinderah and gurneying houses out.