My friend Chrissy Allen was one of the people devastated by the floods in Northern NSW - Evans Head region, inland town of Woodburn to be specific.

Chrissy is a support worker for the aged and works with people with disability also. She needs a car to continue to be employed and get to and from work & to clients.

Her life has been totally devastated by the floods and she has lost every item she ever owned, and like many living in flood zones was uninsured. Everything – imagine that. She owns a t-shirt, pair of shorts, had her phone, a small backpack & her dog when rescued. I have been talking to her as often as I can and each day she is in the same tshirt & shorts. It's gotta be tough to have nothing.

I suggested a go-fund me page – it took quite a while to win her approval to do this – but reality is reality – this is when we need community, family & friends to step in and help where we can.

She needs money for a car so she can work and continue to support those vulnerable members of community that she usually works with. Many have been impacted. Later she will need items for her home - but first - she needs to work and help herself and others. We can, collectively, help her do that.

 

I asked her to write a short intro to the situation and she did – but it didn’t really allow the reader to ‘feel’ what’s actually going on, so instead, I copied her actual words from messages to me over the period of about a week and pieced this together – I think it gives better clarity.

Please help if you can. She cannot do her work of helping so many disadvantaged others if she can’t get to them.

***********************************************************************

So I hate to say but the best way anyone can help is to contribute cash so I can translate that into a car, probably a Ute Or a fridge or washing machine, bed, couch, etc. I’m in no way a precious or materialist person Amanda, but we do need these necessities to survive.

************************************************************************

Oh Amanda thank you. I find it soooo hard to accept anything as I’m usually the one giving. That’s my job. And when I’m happiest. But I think I will just have to say yes to any help this time. I’m normally very resilient but this one has really almost broken me. If it weren’t for my beautiful dog Tilly I don’t know what I’d do. I had only just moved into my great double story home right on the riverbank 3 weeks ago and had not got round to insuring anything. So I only have the t-shirt I was sleeping in and a pair of boardies on that I wore when evacuated at 4am by my friend from the other side of the river. I’ve literally lost everything including my car, boxes of my family photos, jewellery and all of my artworks which I was going to eventually frame and finally have enough room to display them in my home. I am blessed and grateful that I have a temporary roof over my head at Evans Head, though with a bed and a shower. The IGA closed yesterday as it ran out of stock and the SPAR only had some fruit and vegies left too so I’d say they’ve closed today. I work at the Neighbourhood centre where I’m normally helping people. It’s the little bits of charity that really affect me like the chemist who looked at my feet and saw I had no shoes so he told me to go over to the things on display and pick whichever pair I wanted, plus a pair of sunnies and gave my meds for free!! Then I went to the school where they’d set out all the donated clothes into m/f different sizes, sheets, towels and some necessities, so I now have a few more clothes and a few toiletries.

I need to just sit with it here today by myself and cry it out. But tomorrow I’ll walk into town and help out at the school plus give much needed hugs to those that need it. Or anywhere I can. I’ll see if anyone needs a single bed or a floor to sleep on too. I only have a one room place but I have a fold out sofa and a single bed. I think if I get busy again it will distract me as well. My friends and family feel so helpless as there is no way they can help.

 

Evans Head is completely cut off as is Ballina, Coraki and all the other smaller little towns so we can’t get any supplies in. It will take days (if not a week at least) before we are able to connect to any other town. Not that they have anything anyways. It’s all just totally f*cked and so overwhelmingly traumatic. The worst thing I saw though that really got me was a cow (one of many animals that have drowned) that was so close to us when we were being ferried back to Evans from Woodburn. 20minute dingy ride over house roof tops and the top of the 110k sign on the freeway. The poor soul was trying so hard just to keep its nostrils above water and it could barely swim anymore as it was exhausted. It wouldn’t have made it out anyways as there was just at least 10 metre water as far as the eye could see in every direction. One of the saddest things I have ever seen!

It’s F*cking soul destroying. All of us are covered in the most putrid stinking mud. I have to try and sleep now knowing that I’ve lost everything except my Tilly girl.

I feel so broken and that’s not me.

But tonight while my family were inside I went outside and sobbed sitting on the laundry floor whilst trying to sort through any jewelry that might be left from my Nan. I’m in no way a materialistic person. But I found the one piece of jewelry from her that I wanted to get married in one day.

I have to go to sleep

I am beyond tired but I have to get up and do it again tomorrow

So the nightmare continues. Found out yesterday that I will have to demolish my kitchen upstairs as well which means there will be literally nothing left in the whole house except the outside walls and the structure beams.

I am beyond tired, emotionally and physically and today, after I’d been running on Adrenalin for over a week, that drained out of me as well. I couldn’t even bring myself to go into the house today.

Beautiful people like yourself are asking how they can help.

But I’m in a holding pattern now. I now have towels, sheets, but I have nowhere to put them. Let alone use them yet. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful and there will be a time in the future when I can actually use these things, but tea towels are of no use when you have no power or anything to cook on and don’t have crockery.

 

So I hate to say but the best way anyone can help is to contribute cash so I can translate that into a car, probably a Ute! Or a fridge or washing machine, bed, couch, etc. I’m in no way a precious or materialist person Amanda, but we do need these necessities to survive.

I would like to tell people my story as well so they actually get what happened to us all here. I don’t think anyone really gets the big picture

Thank you for being such a beautiful person and caring so much xox

My brain is also waterlogged at the moment. Thank you so much for this help. Xx