Ross – “I grew up in Orange and have worked in a multitude of different jobs throughout my life. I started with the NSW Fire Brigade and then I joined the railways as a training engine man up to an acting driver. I took a position on the electric trains in Sydney and became a senior driver. I had to do 3 years in Sydney and during that time I actually ran over four people. It was traumatic. Working with trauma has been a part of my life since I was 18.
I transferred back to Orange and became the youngest qualified XPT and Indian Pacific driver in NSW. I actually qualified before I turned 21. I had a passion for trains but during this time I was always volunteering my services to community in a rescue role. I worked for many years in rescue. Sometimes there’d be a fatal accident and we’d spend 4 hours in minus 5 degrees getting someone out of a car or from under a train, a plane or a helicopter down. We did all that.
I retrained into IT and became a certified Network Engineer and a Systems Administrator. I worked for NSW Agriculture, NSW Health and Tafe NSW. I’m very hands on. I can rebuild a motor and operate a sewing machine. If someone says you can’t do it, I’ll do it. During that time I married and had 3 children, 2 boys and a girl but the marriage broke down.
In 2003 I transferred to Wollongbar working in the Agriculture sector. I did end up marrying again and we had a son. We were together for 11 years but through circumstances we drifted apart. I left Agriculture and went to SCU to do a 12 month project which took our team 5 months. I was offered another job but the politics were too much. They said, ‘So what are you going to do?’ I said, ‘I’ll go mow lawns’. When I got home I thought, that’s not a bad idea, so I started off with a whipper snipper, a lawnmower, a chain saw and a trailer and my old rally car. I turned it into a landscaping business and employed 9 guys, mostly Indigenous as they were damn hard workers and honest. One of the guys got really sick and had to take 3 months off. I paid him for all the time he was off and when he came back he worked super hard and he did extra hours and I was really appreciative. Speaking of rally cars, I used to do a lot of rallies for Camp Quality every year. I raised around $250k a year for them with just my car. One of our rallies in South Australia we raised 1.7million dollars.
I’ve been the task force commander in 5 national disasters sometimes organising 150 personnel, Sydney storms, Nyngen, fires, numerous places plus I’ve always done road accident rescue. I was the senior abseiling instructor so would go down to Oberon and get choppered into the Blue Mountains for body recoveries or searches. I’m a breathing apparatus instructor. I represented NSW in the Australian motor vehicle rescue championships where we did really well. I know it sounds like I’m blowing my own trumpet but I’m proud of what I’ve done and due to the flood all I have left to show for it is my long service medal for Emergency Services. All my medals and certificates, everything I own was washed away.
At 10pm on the 27th Feb I checked BOM and said to my partner, it’s going to be bad. I live on the corner of Brewster and Magellan St. I said we might lose everything under the house, we might be lucky. We went to bed and at 4am she woke me up and said, I’m sorry! I said..What for? She said, Everything is gone. I walked out and the water was 3 steps from the door and we are 12’8 off the ground. We grabbed the bug-out bag, got my dog’s floaty vest for him. I lost my PTSD dog Charlie 4 months before the flood. He passed away in my arms and I’d had him for 12 years. He’d spent time in hospital with me. That’s another story.
In the evacuation I tied off 3 ropes. One to a table where I tied my dog in his vest. He was happy surfing there. By the time the water got up to my partners chest we tied a rope around her body and behind her head and we didn’t tie it off. I told her to lay back and go with the current. We were on the right side of the house. The oldies around the corner didn’t have any experience of what to do so we waved the boats onto them first. After an hour my partner was tired so we waved down the next boat. We lost it all, 2 cars, 2 trailers including my camper trailer. All we had left were the clothes we stood in. We had saved our motor bikes and my partner’s car the day before. I had to sell off my cars for scrap. All my lasering equipment went. That was my hobby plus about $150k worth of my workshop tools. I’m out at Pearces Creek now. We were really lucky to get a cottage on a farm out of so many applicants.
I lost my landscaping business because I broke my back. I couldn’t employ 9 guys and keep an eye on it. I broke it on a zero turn mower which dropped about 4 inches into a rabbit hole and I was turned sideways looking down at the time. It shattered the bottom of my spine in 4 places. The facial injuries were caused by what they call Causation Injury which is an injury caused by the treatment of the original injury. They were treating my back with high dose pain killers, up to 95mgs of Fentanyl patches and then they wanted to give me Methadone which I said I wouldn’t take. I went through hell with that. What opiates do is degrade the bones and my teeth started snapping off. So 13 years of pain, 16 back operations and 3 facial reconstructions later here I am.
I came down here to the Koori Mail straight after the flood. I told them my qualifications and started volunteering immediately. I began working with a guy called James and we worked well together. He had come up to help out but had to return down the coast. Since then I’ve been helping out here almost everyday. I had 7 days off with Covid and a few for check-ups. The Koori Mail are doing so much good here. We have had a lot of great donations and great volunteers. Sometimes people donate things that aren’t great. If it’s been through the flood would you wear it? Unfortunately we make everything usable somehow so those things are made into rags. There’s very little waste.
Here at Koori Mail you can borrow tools, there’s food, clothing, linen. We had 150 beds donated and they go out to the people who are most in need. We also do Cabbage Tree Island, Kyogle, Casino, Woodburn, Coraki, Wardell and more. Our outreach team have cars with trailers who go out every day to drop off meals and needed items like electric jugs, etc, whatever they need. They are on the road all day delivering stuff. Upstairs we have clothing, sanitary products and a medical centre. It’s been amazing. We do the best we can to keep the place clean. It may seem like a little area but it’s huge and I thank the Koori nation for standing up.
The other side of this is we get people come from out of the area who take way more than they need. Someone the other day loaded 8 boxes of Dolmio Sauce into their car. I made them put 7 back. Another stole 7 boxes of Clove Oil that had just been delivered. We were donated heaps of new ladders, wheelbarrows, etc, by the Sikhs. A big truckload came and within a day we were cleaned out. These were things for people to borrow and then we were seeing people selling them on Marketplace. They are all numbered and signed out but people were giving false ID. These are $500 ladders. Heaps of equipment has been returned broken so the rest of the community can’t benefit from it. We don’t have time to fix this stuff. It’s so disappointing. We have come down on a lot of people who are here every day. We don’t mind feeding them everyday but taking car loads of stuff every single day. I’ve spoken to the local area Commander here and he said they will send a car around when needed. We have photos of people who have abused the kindness. It’s so sad that we have to do this. We had a group of people coming down everyday and I asked what they were doing. They had lost their shop and were restocking it. I said, ‘You can’t stock your shop with community stuff, look down the main street, everybody has lost their shop.’ A lot of this stuff is not free like fresh fruit and veg and we’re running out of budget. The more they take the more people in need miss out. Come down, take enough for 2 days and then come back. If we haven’t got it try one of the other centres. I spent $170 on groceries the other day. I could’ve got it here but I wouldn’t.
It was very eerie driving around at 10pm, no street lights, nothing. It was a ghost town and it made my heart sad to see it like this knowing what a vibrant town it was before the flood. I dress up some days down here just to put a smile on people’s faces because I know what they are going through. I’ve got nothing now, none of my hobbies or equipment I used all the time. I want Lismore to survive. I want to see people back in their homes. I really love this town.”