Australian Rural & Regional News received this email in the early evening of 18 October 2022 from Daryl, whose son is a pastoral manager on a property near Undera.
“Hi, my name is Daryl, my son is a pastoral Manager on a property at Undera Vic., the floods here have not been reported by any news service here, it’s a catastrophic flood, thousands of hectares of crops destroyed, homes flooded, not to mention native animals habitat destroyed, we as a community had no assistance from council, ADF or any other authorities to help fill sandbags and try and fight this flood. I’m attaching some footage . Regards Daryl .”
ARR.News contacted Daryl for further comment upon the desperate situation in Undera. This is what he said :
“The community pulled together so well filling sandbags and supporting each other without the assistance of any government official or ADF member of which I have a huge respect for all ADF but none were called, if it wasn’t for the community a lot more homes would’ve been lost, the levee bank did fail last night and today from this massive flood event.
Even to get sandbags out of the Shepparton City Council was like trying to pull teeth, one farmer Alister pleaded with the Shepparton City Council to obtain sand bags and was told they could have 20 per household. The region needed thousands, the local community pulled together and purchased 4000 sandbags with no assistance from Council until the right person was called then they supplied some more sandbags to help the efforts but not one Council office person attended the scene, some of the farmers commented we just don’t matter and was so heartbroken of no assistance or lack of care by government officials.
One farm manager Jake Wiltshire took me on a tour of the levee bank before it failed where he placed sandbags at his own risk on a stretch of river 10km long that could have blown whilst defending the land, whilst doing this he didn’t see any assistance from any department, but being passionate about his community and his farm that he manages he worked tirelessly to secure the levee, it failed at over 6-8 places flooding the farming community.
The amount of flooding is just too hard to quantify, what a sad day it’s been for Undera . We think of the people of Shepparton, Mooroopna, Echuca and Rochester they have also been flooded with huge amounts of homes flooded plus all the other farming communities. We are now facing another significant rain event over the coming days where potentially another hundred millimetres of rain could fall which would absolutely compound the current situation.”
ARR.News will be contacting the various government authorities involved as to why so little assistance was provided to Undera.
It is concerning that this dire situation may be being repeated across a wide area of rural and regional Victoria.
Related story: Undera – the community left to take responsibility
