Last Sunday the Hippie Camper gang from our Head Office in Brisbane, Australia went out to Grantham QLD, to volunteer for the Grantham Flood Recovery efforts.  Leaving at 7.00am on Sunday morning – large coffee in hand, we drove our new Hippie Campers to Grantham which is about 1 ½ hours West of Brisbane.  This year Australia was hit by a once-in-a-life time flood event and no town suffered more than that of Grantham.  Casie, who organises the volunteer work here and heads to Grantham from Ipswich (40minute drive) every Sunday to help, showed us around the town and explained just how badly they were affected.  They were hit by 3 waves of water from 3 separate directions and the devastation this caused is still apparent as you go down the main street.

It was time to get our hands dirty and to help those people with rebuilding their houses. We started off digging mud out of the houses. Our team was split up in a “digging team” and a “Carry away team”, which worked very efficiently.  After a lot of sweating, hard working and removing a lot of mud we went over to the next house. The Government has given people living in the valley a land swap agreement where they can swap their block of land in the valley for one on the hill provided they cover the costs of moving their home up on to the hill! So we helped a lovely man and his family disassemble his house literally brick by brick, roof tile by roof tile.

We stacked roof tiles on pallets with the radio blaring and cool drinks on offer.   After hours of stacking/dragging tiles, cleaning and detaching wooden planks from the roofing  our workday came to an end.   It was fantastic to help out and I’ve never appreciated a cold drink from the Hippie fridge or the air conditioning of the Hippie Camper more!

We encourage all Hippies young and not so young to get out and volunteer for such a great cause!!  To register for a volunteering session just contact the lovely Casie on: lockyervalleyfloodrecoveryvolunteers@hotmail.com and let her know if you want to do a half day 9-12pm or full day 9am -3pm shift. They’re there every Sunday and they’d love your help.