It takes a total catastrophe to realize just how wonderful it is to live in a small country town.
On 25th November 2015 the surrounding area went up in smoke. A small town: Pinery is where it started and there were incredibly strong gusting winds. It headed south. The wind changed and it drifted towards the east. Consider the distance of Adelaide to Port Pirie and that is the final length of area burnt!
Various towns were evacuated or prepared to evacuate. These included Mallala, Wasleys, Roseworthy, Hamley Bridge, Owen, Freeling, Greenock, Daveystone, Redbanks, Stockport, Kapunda, Tarlee just to name a few!
When you consider the area that the fires covered, you must realize the devastation that has been wrought throughout.
And then the entire Community pulls together. The Hamley Bridge Institute started to receive donations of goods, mostly clothing. They now have to be discriminate about what can be received – there is no room left!
Just how many of us could anticipate what a wonderful community has pulled together to help out. We have families who have lost everything. We lost two lives. We have fire-fighters who are looking at extensive recovery times and others who will be traumatized and looking at fairly long term recovery periods. We thank them so very sincerely for their efforts and the fact that they saved us from so much! How terrible would our devastation have been if we had not had the assistance of these wonderful people, their assistance by local farmers who drive through paddocks with their personal water-trucks and generally for all the wonderful volunteers who took time to help out.
As a person who lived in the metropolitan area where I didn’t know the name of my next door neighbours, either side of me or even across the road, I am just so ecstatic to belong to a wonderful community like Hamley Bridge.
