‘Turning The Tide’, the extraordinary story of Ballina Rotary’s response to the 2022 floods crisis, was launched on Friday evening at Cherry Street Sports Club.
The book was written by local legend Col Lee OAM with the assistance of his neighbour, former journalist Christine McNeil. Launching it in style were the Ball and All podcast team, who interviewed the authors live on stage in front of an enthusiastic audience, saying they were ‘unbelievably grateful to be in the same postcode as Col Lee’.
Mr Lee explained his history around Wardell and Ballina, first on a cane farm and then as a motor mechanic. In later years he was also involved in the wholesale motor vehicle trade, as well as being an NRMA mechanic.
He joined Rotary in 1986, and was president of the club when the big floods hit in 2022.
Initially he remembers the focus was on Lismore, but then Ballina and the wider region, with Rotary immediately taking a leading role in providing food and shelter to large numbers of people who had lost their homes.
The book details the extraordinary generosity of businesses, tradies and numerous community volunteers who threw everything into the rescue and recovery effort as the region reeled under the impact of two unprecedented floods.
Mr Lee said ‘the big thing is to be prepared’, with a response plan now in place in conjunction with local and state government, as well as rescue organisations, which will help with the next emergency.
Not your average Rotary Club
The response of Ballina’s Rotary club to the 2022 flood disaster began with cleaning mud out of houses, doing endless BBQs and providing vouchers from businesses to replace vital household items, but has since gone way beyond that, with major social events, a mental health symposium and even emergency housing.
Since 2022 the Rotary Club of Ballina-on-Richmond has fund-raised and built desperately-needed temporary homes for more than 40 people who had lost everything and were uninsured, right across the Northern Rivers, including hot water plumbing, insulation and kitchens.
‘They are just so grateful for what we’re doing, and most importantly, they’re happy,’ said Mr Lee.
‘For the first time they could see there was hope. Mentally, it was a great, great thing that happened with that temporary housing. We just stumbled across the idea because of our voucher distributions that we did all around Ballina and right down the river.’
Unusually, most of this work happened independently of government. ‘We were pretty free spirited how we did this,’ Mr Lee remembers. ‘We handled most of this completely on our own, within our Rotary Club and our members.’
Because of the local trust for his organisation, and the fact that no money was being creamed off for administration, donations came flooding in, eventually amounting to about two and a half million dollars.
‘Every cent that Rotary gets, particularly in this town, goes back into the charity that we’re supporting,’ said Col Lee.
‘So all that money that we raised for the floods, every bit of that has gone back into the community, to the people who really needed it most.’
Community events
Mr Lee has particularly warm memories of the large community events which brought flood-affected people together at Woodburn, Wardell, Broadwater and Ballina.
‘A couple of people came to me and said, you know, that’s the best night I’ve ever had,’ he remembers.
‘They sat with some of these flood affected people that had never spoken, hadn’t spoken to their neighbor in four or five months, their lives were in so much trauma, and all of a sudden they were able to come along and do something positive.’
He remembers handing out $92,000 worth of vouchers in one night at Woodburn, which had been smashed by the flood. ‘The big thing was to get the community back together, socially and in a in a positive frame. And we had great music, we had great food, we had everybody in a different frame of mind – that was probably one of the greatest things.’
The idea of a book began with an encounter between Col Lee and his neighbour Christine McNeil when she saw him loading up his truck with bread and sausages day after day following the flood, and asked him what was happening.
‘I said to him, “Colin, are you documenting this?” I think he said something vague about making a few notes for Rotary.
‘And I said, “Well, I’ve had little bit of writing experience, if you like, I could help you write the story. This needs to be documented.”
‘And the first time I sat down with Col, I said, “You’re the easiest person I’ve ever interviewed, because you speak slowly!” So Col would be talking and I’d be sort of scribbling notes,’ Ms McNeil remembers.
‘We just had to try and get as many Sunday afternoons together as we could to sit down and start recording all of this amazing history while it was happening.’
With the resulting book already selling well, a further print run is expected, with interest beyond the local area.
Motivation
In regard to his extensive community work with Rotary, Col Lee says, ‘I think you just see the need, and if you’ve got the capacity to do it, you’ve got to be unselfish. I had the time to do it, and I gave the time.’
He also acknowledges that being on the frontline of disaster recovery can take a toll. He recalls talking to some of the soldiers who were posted to the area to assist. ‘I’d say, “How’s your day been, boys?”
‘We’d have a beer with them, and they’d say, “Today, I couldn’t believe how today’s been. We are not trained for this. I’ve been to Afghanistan three times. I’ve been on the front line three times, with bullets going all over the place, and we’re on the other end of a gun. But nothing can compare to what we’ve seen in Lismore and some parts of Broadwater.”‘
Col Lee’s motto (and Rotary’s) is service before self.
‘The most important thing is get involved and do what you can for your neighbor, for your mate, for your friend down the road who might be suffering, or the family suffering, that’s the most important thing.
‘Community is everything,’ he said. ‘Cause that’s your heart and soul, beautiful.’
Copies of ‘Turning The Tide’ are available for $20 from the Ballina-on-Richmond Rotary Club, with profits going to help the Hot Meal Centre and future community projects of the club.
In Ballina you can find copies at: Wallace & Co, the Commonwealth Bank, 101.9 Paradise FM, and the Ballina Maritime Museum.
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