Brad Quilliam immediately re-arranged the room when he arrived in Rochester last week for a series of meetings with flood-impacted residents and community leaders in his capacity as the lead with Australian Rotary’s national community service organisation.
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Mr Quilliam, whose Kinglake home was burned to the ground in 2009, was the guest of Rochester Rotary president Heather Watson and — in keeping with his understanding of disaster-recovery conversations — formed a round circle for the initial 2pm meeting at the Mackay St building that is now the central focus point of flood relief for the community.
In his role as Rotary Australia World Community Service national project supervisor the Rochester project is the latest in a series of emergency responses to assist what he estimated was 140 communities — affected by drought, bushfires and, most recently, floods in three states of Australia.
RACWS has raised millions of dollars through its network of clubs to assist those communities, but Mr Quilliam said the first step was a consultation process to identify projects that were at the top of the affected community’s wish list.
“With a Rotary club of five members (the situation with Rochester) that is a challenge. We are not here to take over or tell you what you need, instead we would like to be told what was required,” he told the meeting.
Through the two open meetings and a third that was restricted to flood-recovery committee members and Campaspe Shire representatives, the RACWS expects to have a clear direction for its financial contribution.
Presidents of two neighbouring Rotary clubs, Bendigo and Bendigo-Sandhurst, also attended the Rochester meetings and — the following day — Mr Quilliam met with the a leadership group from Echuca-Moama Rotary.
Mr Quilliam’s involvement in Rotary came as a result of the bushfire disaster 14 years ago.
He was charter president of Kinglake Rotary Club and since then has led a state government-funded Fire Recovery Unit (with a focus on community morale, heath, wellbeing and business development), the Kinglake Ranges Economic and Community Recovery committees and been a member of the Bushfire Education Foundation.
The father of four was also a key player in developing a number teenage programs as a result of youth disengagement from the bushfire-affected community.
The Black Saturday bushfires killed 173 people, 120 in the Kinglake area alone. Another 414 people were injured, more than 450,000ha was burned and 3500 buildings (including more than 2000) houses destroyed.
Mr Quilliam said, more than a decade later, his community was still working through these issues.
“We lost some community leaders in the fires. We were relying on those people and had to look to new leaders,” he said.
“We identified what were the priorities, but there was a lot of reliance on government.
“That was a mistake. The recovery needed to be community led.”
Prior to living in Kinglake Mr Quilliam lived in Cockatoo, in the Dandenong Ranges, where he first experienced a disaster event — the 1983 Ash Wednesday tragedy.
In recent times (including this week), Mr Quilliams and RACWS has been focused on flood-recovery assistance.
He and his Rotary community service group has provided funding for emergency housing in in the Northern Rivers community of NSW.
“This has enabled people to move back onto properties and back into the community,” he said.
RACWS has been working with hardware giant Bunnings, at a national level, to assist the flood-affected NSW communities in returning their homes to a functional capacity.
And while there has been a focus on housing and infrastructure lost as a result of the floods, Mr Quilliam said even more time had been poured into ensuring the mental health of these communities.
He said in the Kinglake community, such was the emotional impact on people that they were unable to return to the town and 60 per cent of the community “moved on”.
“We want to stop things like that happening,” he said.
“We are trying to learn from previous events to help communities put things in place so they return to as close to what they were before the event as possible.’’
Mr Quilliam said, as had happened in 2009 with the relocation of 3500 off the mountain at Kinglake, people in Rochester had seen their community disappear from around them.
“Six months later there is a natural division in the community, between those people who were not impacted directly by the floods, those still living in caravans and those who had managed to get back into their homes,” he said.
“I saw it in Kinglake, where one home would be destroyed by the fire and the neighbouring house remained untouched.
“There will be cracks in the community coming into winter, between the haves and have nots. That needs to be managed.”
He said communities needed to function together and he had witnessed first hand the Kinglake community become very fractured.
“Getting people back to Rochester is a priority,” he said.
“Everything becomes more viable when there are more people in the community.
“Most businesses and community services seem to be operational again and available for use, but there are just not the people on the ground to use them.”
Rotary has already launched programs of support in Rochester, albeit at a entry level compared to the talk of millions of dollars in recovery being poured into the town.
An example of what Rotary’s network of clubs has achieved is the recent winter blanket appeal that was launched from the Rochester court house building.
There has also been a $500 debit card distribution program, which have put the funds back into the community.
Discussion was held at the meeting regarding the potential for the former library building, re-opened only a month ago, to be used as a youth hub or community meeting place.
With an estimated 50 per cent of Rochester residents still not in their homes it has been impossible for flood-recovery organisers to identify exactly what was needed because of the difficulty in communicating with home owners.
Those who experienced the 2011 event said because so many people remained in the community post flood there were many more available to do “the heavy lifting’’.
This time around, however, if people were not directly impacted they had been called on in some other way to help — through hosting family or friends, or through having a business or employment impacted.
Mr Quilliam said the RACWS group would be collating material from its meetings and returning to the Rochester community with a recovery model that could be implemented by the service club.
Imagine is Rotary’s worldwide theme for 2023, the service organisation encouraging members to “get up each day knowing that we can make a difference”.
It is a theme that Rochester people will hope is a lived experience for them through the town’s most difficult time in its history.
For more information about the RACWS project or to assist Rochester Rotary Club email Heather Watson at ghwatson1@bigpond.com or phone 0439 842 177.
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