The Elegant Sufficiency

The Brisbane Floods: The Aftermath

A friend in Brisbane emailed me this week, painting a vivid picture of the city post-flood. It’s the best piece of writing I’ve seen on the volunteer army, and the aftermath.

 

By Kim Broadfoot*

I don't know the name for the colour that is between gray and brown, but that is the colour of the sludge caked on the roads, the footpath, every blade of grass and shrub, walls, doors, abandoned cars, and especially on the small mountains of ruins forming on the foothpaths — things that were useful and valuable when they sat in their homes on Wednesday. It is not until you look up, to the green canopy of poincianas and blue sky, that you remember where you are. Brisbane.

On one side of William Parade, Fairfield, is a park. It's the best of playgrounds: quiet, the kind with climbable trees, a fort, and long swathes of soft grass. Now it's knee deep in debris, and sludge that is baking and emulsifying on every surface. Dozens of gum-booted volunteers attack it with shovels. “It's got to be done right,” one says with determination, “kids play here”. Thank you, mine often do.

On the other side of the road are houses. A mix of Queenslanders, post-war bungalows, and modest brick and tile homes that were probably built after '74. One smart new villa. All of them inundated on the high tide in the early hours of Thursday morning. Now, there is an industrious, determined chaos. The highly competent, in their work boots and high-vis shirts, command cooperation with their utes, bobcats, gurneys, compressors. Teams of big guys take charge. Newbie volunteers with their straw hats, brooms, buckets and rubber gloves quietly work out what to do, and just start. There's no power, the water pressure is lousy and the street is clogged with a traffic jam of good intentions, but somehow, it is all working. 

I'm inside at number 54. I've just met Jill and her husband, John — friends of a friend. The clean up crew from yesterday has made great progress; the walls and floors have emerged, and the house will be habitable. Great care is being taken to salvage anything that can be cleaned. Outside, everyone complains of the smell of mud, but in Jill's kitchen cupboards, I am engulfed by lavender pine-o-clean. Incredibly, Jill is cheery, "ohhh, it smells good in here," she says, but I worry about how long that will last, with the mud trapped where we can't reach under cupboards, and a long wait likely before there's a new kitchen. People beaver away good-naturedly in every room of the house. “Look, Jill,” says one coming in from the bathroom, holding one of the four-minute shower timers issued to all Brisbane residents a few years back, when we were all in the grip of a crushing drought, “glad you saved all the water up in Wivenhoe so it could come down and flood you!” There's laughter and instant camaraderie, but you can see the exhaustion, worry about the days ahead, and the strain that comes from having to manage a houseful of near-strangers with their hands on everything you own. 

At lunch time, thousands of sausages sizzle around the suburb on gas barbecues, and the conversation up and down the street is all insurance. No-one seems to have any.  “They quoted us $10 grand a year”; “We just didn't think you could get it, so we never tried”; “We should have been with Suncorp” [who have offered automatic flood coverage since 2008]. In the weeks ahead, this will be a source of much bitterness and regret. Compared to some, Jill and John are lucky — the damage can be repaired, even if it takes time, and they rescued many important possessions in the hours before the waters rose. A friend comes in from a house down the road, shaking his head. The ceiling has collapsed, and the gyprock walls have had to be pulled away in sodden clumps. Soon, the house is gutted — just like its owners. 

As we leave, car packed with muddy things to take home and wash, we crawl through streets brimming with goodwill. People later complain that there were too many idle rubberneckers, but I actually think that every single one of the thousands of people in Fairfield has been there to do something. Cheery teenagers in short-shorts and cute pink gumboots hand out iced water, canopies shelter makeshift cafes. Utes are parked with chalkboard signs offering to give away everything from ice and face masks, to garbage bags. Bands of helpers in matching shirts represent corporates, church groups, clubs, or sporting teams. Officials door-knock, handing out forms about emergency assistance. The army is there, patiently directly the impossible traffic, while the heavy equipment waits at the side-lines to swing in tomorrow. 

And it is hard not to feel good about this community. To feel proud of the humanity of the helpers and the good grace of the helped. But it is important not to dwell too long in self-congratulation. The frantic, friendly activity in Fairfield will slow. We will return to our suburbs over the hill, where lawns need to be mown, back-to-school gear assembled, and newspapers need to be scanned for the amazing photos of the day it has been. While in William Parade, and in thousands of other streets across Queensland, the ruined homes, the grief and the hardship will remain. 

What is needed most then, I suppose, is money. Helping hands and donated goods are great, but cash is what will pay for a new kitchen, re-wiring, carpet, and painting. This is what to do, when you are watching the coverage, whether from far away or high and dry in the next street, and wishing there was a way to make a difference. Please give to the Queensland Premier's Disaster Relief Appeal.

* Kim Broadfoot, my oldest friend, has shared her words here before. Read her wonderful eulogy for her grandmother here. (You'll find it past my rantings about blogging...!)

Michael Pollan at the Writers Festival

I’ll be honest… I haven’t read Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food) so what he had to say last Saturday at the Sydney Writers' Festival was fascinating, if not surprising.
On his request, moderator Caroline Baum had taken Pollan to the Sydney Fish Markets, and to an Australian supermarket. He showed the audience Exhibit A, Yoplait Smackers, and Exhibit B, an Omega 3-enhanced bread that “promises healthy brain development”. Among the bread’s ingredients was “tuna oil”. “This is a tuna sandwich even before you open the can of tuna,” he joked, before going on to say that adding Omega-3 to processed food is a very "reductive" approach to nutrition. He continued this theme on ABC's 7.30 Report on Tuesday night (transcript and video here) when he told Kerry O’Brien (who was hugely amused by the concept of the "soul of a carrot"):

“We know carrots are good for you, right? People have been eating them for a long time and the assumption was that what was good in cancer preventing in the carrot was the beta carotene. What makes it orange. So we extracted that and we made these supplement pills and we gave them to people and low and behold in certain populations like people who drink a lot would get sicker, were more likely to get cancer on beta carotene and the scientists kind of scratched their head. There is a couple of explanations. We don't know. But one may be that the beta carotene is not the key ingredient. You know there are 50 other carotenes in carrots. Food is incredibly complex. It's a wilderness, you know, we don't know what's going on deep in the soul of a carrot. And we shouldn't kid ourselves to think we can reduce it to these chemicals.”

My notes below on other themes he touched on at the Writers' Festival:

• In California’s Central Valley, vineyards are being ripped up to make way for almond crops, which are now one of the most profitable crops in the US. But almond trees only bloom for 10-14 days in February so there aren’t enough bees to do the pollination job. So now, every February, 60% of America’s honey bees are shipped across the country — others are brought in from Australia. With bees from all over the world mingling, it becomes, he says, “a great bee brothel”, trading viruses and parasites. The Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV) has been implicated in colony collapse disorder in honey bees. Bee owners get $140 a box for the process. The bees are fed high-fructose corn syrup to get them in shape. Industrial agriculture is stressing bees and monoculture is the “original sin of agriculture”; nature doesn’t work that way. It may be an efficient method of production, but it’s not a resilient one.
• Caroline Baum asked Pollan how we can get people to care about food. Pollan responded by saying that when you can tell stories that link what’s on someone’s plate to what’s happening in the wider world, when you can tell people a narrative, a story, that’s when people will start to care. (This to me, is the most interesting sort of food writing.)
• He talked about the carbon and moral footprint of eating meat and predicted that we won’t be eating the way we do now in the future.
• He was asked about the crazy portion sizes in the States. Apparently they got bigger in the Seventies, when the price of raw materials was negligible. Companies such as McDonald’s were faced with two options: reduce prices, a bad move in business, or increase portions. The latter option won out. He drew gasps from the audience when he said it was possible to get a 64 ounce portion of soda in the US — half a gallon. That’s about eight cups, 1.9 litres, 4 pints. With food prices skyrocketing, it remains to be seen whether the super-sizing will continue.
• In one of the most interesting things he had to say, Pollan said that eating ethically in the 21st century is a complex decision-making process that depends on your values. What is your priority: your concern for your health? For the environment? For animals? Because those values might conflict. Organic rules, for example, “were invented before climate change was an issue”, and organics can have a very high carbon footprint. Work out what you value, Pollan said. “The key thing is to introduce values, not just value to your shopping decision.” As a result, we should be trying to get as much information as we can about what we buy. Transparency is what matters. 
• The refrain he has repeated time and again: “Don’t eat things your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognise: Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants.”

Pollan can also be heard on Radio National’s Life Matters program here.