Floodies!

As soon as I realised I was off to Brisvegas I was keen to get involved with the flood clean up. I was lucky enough to find a government funded place to do so with a group called 'Conservation Volunteers Australia', which would entail me spending five days doing flood clean up work in central QLD. After my trip down the Gold coast, to see Byron and Nimbin and the like, Caitlin and I saw some of the Sunshine coast at the weekend before I was heading out to get invloved with the flood relief. I didn't really know anything about the kind of work we'd be doing, but I was off to the office at Navy O clock Monday morning to find out! Unfortunately the rest of the volunteer programme weren't quite such early birds and I had an enjoyable 45 min wait before anyone else showed up. Luckily once they did arrive the programme was efficently underway and with minimal paperwork filling-in we were off to Toowoomba in central Queensland, which was one of the towns worst hit by the flooding. First order of the day was to aquaint myself with my new 'floodies' (flood buddies- yes, I am a comedy genius); I was in a team with two young English guys who had just finished college (Martyn and George) and two Korean girls (Sally and Joy), our team leader was a true Ozzy crocodile-dundee-alike called Geoff.

Upon arrival at camp we were briefed on our first days work which was to be cleaning out a community centre which had been flood damaged. We were all assigned tasks when we got there and I opted for toilet cleaning duty knowing noone else would want to be! The Korean girls asked if they could come with me (slightly dubious that they knew what we were signing up for) which they regretted horribly when they saw the state of the 'dunnies'. Not horrendously messy, but chock FULL of tree frogs. One toilet had become home to 26 of the cute critters! However, while I found the amphibians charming and cute Sally and Joy saw them as much cause for screaming and running away. The next hour or so was spent on 'frog rescue', which would have taken much less time if Geoff and I weren't the only ones prepared to pick them up. To be fair Joy did have a go at holding one of the green croaky chaps, but with classic comic timing the frog decided to relieve itself all over her hands as soon as she picked it up which resulted in yet more screaming and me having to catch a now-airborne frog. Frog unharmed, Joy then declined to have anything more to do with the de- amphibianing process and went back to mopping floors with Sally.

Eventually the dunnys were clean, as was the rest of the property, despite the locals wind-up calls of 'Watch out for the snakes! We saw hundreds go in there!'. We were then back off to camp to meet the other floodies who had been working in different teams, in total the camp was catering for about 30 volunteers. It was really nice to meet the reminder of the volunteers as most of them were born and bred ozzys who had used up their leave from work to come and do 2 or 3 weeks helping with flood relief. I wonder how many people would do the same if such a tragedy struck England? A classic character among the group was a chap called Jonathan, who was still dredlocked despite being into his mid- 40s and enojoyed discussing what would happen if his hair started to drop out. Wearing a pink and black 'WORLD POVERTY- what are YOU doing about it?' t-shirt (for the whole week-stereotype, what stereotype?), and looking very similar to someone brandishing a clip board on the street who migh chase you for a 2 pound donation, Jonno was actually superb fun; winning the hearts of my team by introducing us to a card game with a rude name which we played ceaslessly for hours till bedtime. Other volunteers ranged from students who had time off from school to help, all the way up to Murray who must have been in his mid 70s and referred to my whole team as the 'idiot youth' (until I managed to fix the TV so he could watch the news, when he referred to me as the 'slightly less idiot youth'. Better than Jonno who referred to me as the 'one as sharp as a bowling ball'. They all liked me really.)

The rest of the week was to be spent helping farmers in remote areas put their fencing back up. Yep, that's right, I know how to strain and tie fencing now. When the floods hit farmers moved their cattle to higher ground and a lot of the low lying pastures are unusable because the fencing got demolished. If you look at the picture here of what the water did to a ROAD you can see why fences stood no chance! This work entailed lots of driving to and from sites, which led to a lot of team bonding; ranging from group renditions of ' We are the Champions', to farting competitions (to the horror or the Korean girls), to Spanish lessons, to Korean lessons, to burger eating contests, to fishing lectures, to talk-geoff-into-doing-handbrake-turns-in-the-minibus challenges, to kangaroo and snake spotting sessions, to lectures on the birds of Australia. Needless to say I learned a lot, not least that when you're in an enclosed space with two teenage boys all the windows should always be open. The farmer we had been assigned to for the week actually no longer needed our services, but his neighbour, a lovely man called Lindsay asked if we would help him out, and we were more than happy to do so! Lindsay's land was part- woodland and his fences had become wrapped around trees, and was covered in debris from the nearby railway line- it would have taken him a month with hired help to get done what we did in our four days there; we managed to get up nearly 4k of fencing in that time... amazing what you can do with so many pairs of hands! We were super lucky in that Lindsay and his wife were so greatful we were showered with homebaked muffins, cakes, fresh watermelon, sweets and pancakes. Work turned out to be much harder with our stomachs sticking out a mile! We also had great fun looking at the wildlife on the farm, the farmer literally picking up anything of interest and bringing it to show us. He found a lizard at one point, picked it up by the tail while driving and on his mobile phone to bring it back for us! He also found us a dead snake which to boys were happy to pose with for some action phots. Geoff and Lindsay were also happy to reenact the 'you call that a knife?!' classic ozzy bit to our great delight!

On the Wednesday we moved to a new camp even further out in the sticks. The government had managed to procure an old 'classic' ozzy holiday/ theme wedding resort for our usage called 'Adora Downs', which has to be one of my favourite places I've visited in Oz. The main building was an old shearing shed, the accommodation were classic labourers huts made of wood and corrugated iron, the TV room was an old school bus and once again the toilets were full of tree frogs! It was at this point we found out about the earthquake in Christchurch, and I have nothing but praise for the Australians, who still in the process of cleaning up from the floods immediately relocated their professional aid support teams to NZ to help out.

The best part of the ranch was that it had kangaroos living in it, who not only were so tame you could pet them, but who bounced into the dining hall at dinner time to see what they could pinch!! I was delighted, doubly so at the expressions on all the Ozzy faces as they explained that kangaroos NEVER do stuff like that, and they had never seen one so close either, even in a zoo! we also did manage to see some bonafide wild ones out on our travels, so I can well and truly check that box!

All in all it was an amazing week, definately the best thing I've done in Oz!

By Friday night I was back in Brizzy, and by Saturday night I was down in Sydney waiting for my flight out to New Zealand!