The 2011 Floods
1. Karma, the Cemetery & the Floods
This article was originally published by Chris Dawson in January 2011.
Well, what a day! Last Sunday morning over a hundred volunteers descended on the South Brisbane Cemetery and a few hours later they had cleaned up the flood-affected parts of the cemetery. It was the biggest clean up effort the cemetery has ever seen, and if you believe in karma, then this was karma at work.
It happened almost accidentally. While planning the Great Graveyard Shift for the Friends of South Brisbane Cemetery (FOSBC), we sent a media release on that event to Channel 7, who at that exact same time were looking for places to add to their ‘Sister Suburb Sunday’ project, which involved registering thousands of volunteers and heading out to clean up flood-affected sites. This was organised with the Rotary Club and the Sunday Mail. They got back in touch us with and asked if we would like some help, and so three days later there we were at the cemetery under blue skies as the volunteers rolled in from all over Brisbane.
The good work of a volunteer group is paid back when the community pitched in to clean up a cemetery after big flooding.
The volunteers got down to work with rakes, brooms, shovels and wheelbarrows, and very soon the roadside was filled with debris that had previously covered pathways and graves.
The good work of a volunteer group is paid back when the community pitched in to clean up a cemetery after big flooding.
Rotary set up two free food and drink stations to help keep everyone going, and by the afternoon we had achieved all that we had hoped to and more. Sections of the cemetery that had previously been swamped by muddy debris and dead branches were clean, tidy, and looked better than they had in many a year.
The good work of a volunteer group is paid back when the community pitched in to clean up a cemetery after big flooding.
The clean-up was one of those great days that the FOSBC will long remember. We use the word ‘karma’ here because the FOSBC secretary Tracey Olivieri, who has for so long struggled to maintain the cemetery with a small group of women, was in tears at the sight of so many good people rolling up their sleeves and pitching in. Tracey had spent most of the previous two weeks in flood clean-up mode around Goodna as a private citizen and as a council employee.
In a strange way, the floods were very good for the cemetery. No real physical damage was done, but the muddy mess prompted the city council cemetery department to engage in an overdue clean-up of the grounds and replace lost FOSBC equipment. It also led to ‘Sister Suburbs Sunday’ and a whole lot of new people seeing the place for the first time. We can well do without any more floods here, but there are thousands of stories about the good that this disaster has brought out in people, and this was one of them.
2. The Great Graveyard Shift
This article was originally published by Chris Dawson on 7 March 2011
The ‘Great Graveyard Shift’ took place at South Brisbane Cemetery yesterday, and we could not be more pleased with the results. We (the the Friends of South Brisbane Cemetery and the Boggo Road Gaol Historical Society) had organised about 50 people to come along for this community clean-up, but in the end we had over 90 turn up and register with us! Taking into account that at least ten people who said they would come didn’t show, we were amazed at the numbers.
This included about 30 cubs and scouts from the Tarragindi and Kurilpa groups, who were a hive of activity and really stuck to their task for a few hours, which for kids is a huge effort. The rest of us cleaned around various parts of the cemetery, and everyone got stuck into the free morning tea and lunch.
For the second time in two months the community pitches in to clean up a cemetery damaged by the 2011 floods.
It was especially rewarding to see so many children taking part and enjoying themselves. One of our major aims is to foster greater community respect for the care and use of cemeteries, and hopefully these kids (many of whom were seeing the cemetery for the first time) will long remember this positive experience. They were certainly fascinated by the headstones, and it was great to see them develop an understanding of what the place is used for, when it was used, what it means to others, and what work is required to maintain it.
For the second time in two months the community pitches in to clean up a cemetery damaged by the 2011 floods.
This was also the case for a lot of the adults as well. One of the major benefits of these events is the community involvement, because the more time and effort people spend cleaning or even walking around cemeteries like this, the more they come to care about the place. While the parts of the cemetery we cleaned look so much better now, what I find more rewarding is this engagement of people with heritage and the development of better community ties with a place.
For the second time in two months the community pitches in to clean up a cemetery damaged by the 2011 floods.
All in all, it was an excellent follow-up to the Sister Suburbs Sunday clean-up we had in January 2011, and the FOSBC and BRGHS continue planning for other community clean-up projects at the cemetery.
