Dawn and I were watching the CNN news coverage of the floods in Queensland with the boys recently while we were in Fiji. We were gobsmacked at the sheer force of nature unleashing herself just several hundred miles away.
The saddest story I鈥檝e read so far is about the young boy who let his younger brother get saved first, and subsequently drowned. It鈥檚 devastating. I watched Beau and Chick splashing around the pool by the beach. To think that brown sludgy water could entrap one and take another from me to never see again is unfathomable.
Explaining why the kids needed to eat their dinner before playing their new DS games grew tiresome. I get goosebumps imagining explaining to your children where their whole house, contents and loved toys have gone and why they need to sleep on the floor in a shelter.
I know that as a community Australians will join in to assist. Our opportunity now is to show that our local community can support and be there as much as any other.
Dawn and are going to ask our sons to dig deep into their favourite toys and belongings to give to those poor kids who have lost everything. Kids who slept with their favourite Buzz Lightyear, now jammed in a tree branch broken and muddy.
Normal life won鈥檛 return for quite some time and then as the waters recede, the true depths of this disaster will be revealed.
Some banks are suspending home repayments, which is a step, but imagine your house is literally suspended on a new mound of dirt 50 metres down the road. Would you feel like paying the mortgage?
The rain will stop, the flood will dissipate and the clean-up will happen. What won鈥檛 happen is the ability to stop this from happening again. The comfort in all this, our fellow Queenslanders and now other states鈥檙esidents, is knowing you have the world around you, wanting to support and care for you as much as we possibly can.
You are aware that Fiji is ruled by anti-Gay military junta?