The worst thing about the flooding in Brisbane is that it takes the spotlight off flooding in rural communities – just as occurred in 1974 when Queensland’s Gulf Country went under water.<\/p>\n
The fact is, average income and asset ownership is much lower in the bush than in cities and suburban areas.\u00a0 Cities have much greater resources\u00a0 (personally and collectively) and however bad the flooding is in Brisbane, it will recover relatively rapidly.\u00a0 Also, whenever there is a disaster, attention focuses on mass drama involving a large number of people whereas a calamity that befalls just one family or two goes largely ignored, despite the fact that on an individual basis, their personal struggle is equally great (in fact arguably more so, because they don’t have the collective support of a number of other people in the same situation).\u00a0 Our greatest sympathy – and assistance – should be directed towards those struggling on their own.<\/p>\n
Many rural communities are already\u00a0fighting to survive, after years of drought and ordinary commodity prices combined with escalating business and living costs.\u00a0 Socially many small towns and communities are struggling, with the drift of younger\u00a0generations to cities – chasing employment and higher material standards of living.\u00a0 Many of the small towns devastated by floods will NEVER be the same again.\u00a0 And these communities are the\u00a0least likely to receive attention or to ask for help.<\/p>\n
The smaller the community, the greater the need for outside assistance.<\/p>\n
I will donate\u00a0 $5 per sale\u00a0from now until the end of March (2011) to charities assisting people affected by the recent floods.\u00a0 However the money will not be going to the Queensland Premier’s Flood appeal, instead it will be donated to one or more charities who specifically help people in the bush.\u00a0 (See note below)<\/p>\n
One such charity is Care Outreach, a charity specialising in assisting rural families.<\/p>\n
If you know of any other charities whose specific charter is to assist people living in rural and remote areas, please let me know.<\/p>\n
It’s also important to remember – February is northern Australia’s highest rainfall month.\u00a0 Realistically, northern Australia can expect flooding to occur sometime before Easter 2011.\u00a0 The flooding of central and southern Queensland in December and January may just be the tip of the iceberg.\u00a0 The weather bureau forecast this rain many months ago – at least as far back as August or even July 2010.\u00a0 We can’t say we weren’t warned.<\/p>\n
Stock up your pantry.<\/p>\n
PS:\u00a0 (Note made in early April) – A donation was made to Remote Area Frontier Services.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The worst thing about the flooding in Brisbane is that it takes the spotlight off flooding in rural communities – just as occurred in 1974 when Queensland’s Gulf Country went under water. The fact is, average income and asset ownership is much lower in the bush than in cities and suburban areas.\u00a0 Cities have much […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,8,11],"tags":[82,179],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1098"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1098"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4206,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1098\/revisions\/4206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}