By Kate Dousset, TBS Learning and Development Trainer.25th Jan - 29th of Jan
We called ourselves the “The Bleach Babes”. We were the first volunteer group from The Body Shop to go to Queensland and help with the flood clean up and recovery. Our Team consisted of:
- Kerry Robinson (Wise Foundation & Team Captain),
- Pam Williams (Picker/Packer-VIC),
- Mel Haley (Assistant Manager-Pac Fair QLD),
- Ashleigh Horne (Assistant Manager-Hornsby NSW),
- Megan Hallam (Store Manager-George St NSW),
- Neil Donkin (Trainer-NSW) and myself.
Our job was to help in any way possible, no job was too big or too small.
Tuesday 25th Jan – We arrive at our Youth Hostel after making our journeys from Sydney, Melbourne and the Gold Coast, we introduce ourselves and express to one another how eager we are to lend a helping hand. We jump in our family van and head to Ipswich to meet with St Vinnie’s (our "on-the-ground" partner) and tour the hardest hit areas around Ipswich. The tour revealed the sheer devastation caused by the floods.
Wednesday 26th Jan (Australia Day) – Family Fun Day in Lowood (30 minute drive NW of Ipswich, population 1010). The locals of Ipswich needed a rest, a tiring 2 weeks of cleaning, devastation, realization and sadness was wearing them down. The local pool opened its gate and provided a free sausage sizzle to locals. It gave the town an opportunity to rest, chat, heal and share their experiences. The Body Shop “Bleach Babes” arrive with one thing in mind, pamper, pamper, pamper and that we did. We set up a table displaying our pamper products and wrote on a blackboard “FREE PAMPER, LOVE THE BODY SHOP”. In no time the women, children and men of Lowood came running and whispers from the town were “The Body Shop girls are here at the pool, they are giving free hand massages and you even get a free care pack with it”.By the end of the day the Lowood pool was a luxurious bath, full of Peach Body Butter babes. To touch people’s hearts we started by reaching out our hands, the locals were opening up to us, sharing their experiences and asking for help for themselves or for others. By the end of the day we had lists of people names, addresses, phone numbers and ways we could help them over the coming days and weeks.
Thursday 27th Jan – Assessing the emotional loss and the property damage filled the day, the morning was spent contacting the many people we made friends with from the fun day and the afternoon was spent visiting the properties to see what we could do to help.
One lady we met at the pool was having a tough time, her house was flooded and then deemed un safe to live in because of asbestos, she had animals to take care of on the property and in fear of looters taking what little she had left, had spent the last two weeks living in her shed with her two teenage kids. She asked us for a washing machine, then after visiting her and her family it was clear she needed more. They were sleeping on old mattresses which they had managed to dry out, they had muddy blankets which they were unable to get clean, limited shelter from the rain in their shed and very few clothes and food.
During the afternoon to help out we did 15 loads of washing so they had clean blankets, towels, sheets and clothes to wear. We also started making calls to see if we could arrange household goods/furniture for them to make their shed more homely.
Friday 28th Jan – So how do we turn the shed into a temporary home?
1. Salvage anything that can be cleaned and restored
2. Anything that can’t be salvaged, put it on a pile so the council can remove it
3. Construct a shed wall out of doors salvaged from the house to protect from weather
4. Dig a trench and concrete along the entrance to the shed so water doesn’t run in
5. Hang a curtain for privacy and to prevent pesky bugs from making themselves at home
6. Arrange for lawns to be mowed to keep area around shed free from snakes
7. Buy more food and supplies for the family
8. Let family know we have 3 beds, a washing machine and a couch being delivered to them the next day courtesy of Vinnie’s
9. Say goodbye to family but let them know we have another team of people coming to lay lino in their shed the following week.
Friday afternoon was spent at another house just down the road, in a rural town, this is about 20km’s away. Our job was to clean the inside walls of the family home, so with bleach in our buckets and mops in our hands we transformed into the “Bleach Babes”. Room by room we scrubbed high and low until the house was restored to its original state. According to the husband and wife, the walls looked even cleaner than before the floods.
Saturday 29th Jan – One last stop! Saturday morning before our flights we visited Booval (East of Ipswich). We were visiting a retirement village to check if they needed any help in their recovery efforts. The residents were excited to see us, they had a big job in store for us, they needed the 9 hole golf course raked!! So with delight we booked our next team of Volunteers to rake the golf course!
Their reward was a BBQ with the residents of the Booval Retirement village
To be continued…………
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