Craig Brown (left) and Don Sofra, two farmers who were part of the sandbagging operation at Kaarimba. They were full of praise for the volunteers who answered the call for help.
While attention has been focused on sandbagging operations in the rural cities, small villages and rural towns have been battling the floods in hastily organised emergency operations.
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While there were a few Army and emergency uniforms, most people were just local farmers and students who gave up their time to fill the sandbags, co-ordinate transport and provide catering.
The volunteers were too humble to admit it, but their work has probably saved scores of houses from being inundated and countless sheds and buildings from being damaged, along with the equipment inside.
Two of the communities north of Shepparton, Picola and Kaarimba, were visited by Country News on Friday, October 28, after most of the volunteers had departed.
Most of this crop at Kaarimba was flattened by floodwater.
Kaarimba farmer Don Sofra said the operation started small when a few people thought they would get a couple of hundred sandbags, so he brought a load of sand into the Kaarimba Hall reserve.
“We ended up with 340 tonne of sand and 17,000 sandbags, from Tuesday to Friday arvo,” Mr Sofra said.
“We had a really good response form the Waaia Football and Netball Club. Actually there were about half a dozen netball girls home from uni and they were here every day.
“I reckon they did about two thirds of the sandbags, they were going all bloody day!
“We had volunteers from Nathalia, from Shepp and Zeerust. We sent two or three truck loads to Zeerust, about five or six to Barmah and we did some local drops where we knew they were in trouble.
“It was a really good community effort.”
Fellow farmer Craig Brown described the response as amazing.
“We had up to 75 people here during the day,” he said.
Remnants of the flood operations centre at Kaarimba Hall.
