Chris Finley, Glenn Price and Peter Dickason from Connecting Communities.
Photo by
JORDAN TOWNROW
Connecting Communities Australia was in Rochester and Echuca last week to help people still struggling to recover from the past two floods.
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In collaboration with Echuca Regional Health, Anglicare and Windermere, the organisation identified 16 properties that needed a helping hand.
The CCA chief operating officer Glenn Price said Rochester and Echuca had been on the organisations' radar for a while.
“You can tell it's been a really big impact on the towns and people are still pretty affected,” he said.
“In September last year, we did similar work in Shepparton, and we had some funding left... someone from the Rochester Flood Recovery team rang me and I said we’d love to come and help.”
Ben Boerson, Manda Marshall and Nick Redward were among the volunteers.
Photo by
JORDAN TOWNROW
Eleven volunteers travelled from all over Australia for the week to help out, including two 17-year-olds completing their Duke of Edinburgh volunteer work.
The majority of the properties that the organisation worked on were based in Rochester with only three of the 16 based in Echuca.
The group helped by doing work such as removing flood debris from gardens, putting in new gates, laying a driveway and a few paint jobs.
Peter Dickason was busy painting for most of Thursday.
Photo by
JORDAN TOWNROW
Rochester local Doug Mitchell asked the group if they could help out with some painting inside his home.
Mr Mitchell said he was grateful for the help he received.
“Groups like this are great, just to know that they’re still out there, and they’re still chasing up on things,” he said.
“It would be very easy to forget what happened and say it’s already two years down the track, let’s move on to something else, but it’s good to know that there’s still people out there, thinking about us.”
The volunteers worked on the properties across seven days.
Photo by
JORDAN TOWNROW
The CCA aims to help smaller communities recover from natural disasters or prepare them in ways to reduce the impact.
Over the coming months they will be working in the Bega Valley and along the mid-coast of NSW to help communities in the area stay prepared in case of a natural disaster.
They are also looking forward to helping those in Western Queensland with the aftermath of flooding.
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