IT takes a special kind of stoicism to live in western NSW.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Away from the densely populated east coast, with its own peculiar problems – overcrowding, relentless traffic, unaffordable housing, pollution – life in the bush is slower, but can be no less challenging.
Bushfires are a constant threat in summer and temperatures regularly reach 40 degrees or beyond, depending on where you live.
Dust storms whip up during the droughts, thunderstorms wreak havoc during the summer and, occasionally, as was seen this week, the rain pounds down for too long, the rivers rise and crops, properties and houses are inundated.
Extremes in weather are not a problem unique to Australia, but it’s the wild extremes – from long, grinding years of drought to 10-metre high rivers suddenly raging through formerly bone dry towns – that provide the particular test in the state’s west.
“Where the creeks run dry or 10 feet high, and it’s either drought or plenty,” goes the quote.
The flooding in Forbes and on the Macquarie River around Warren this week has again shown the best qualities of those who choose to live, work and raise families in the west of NSW.
Footage has shown residents mucking in together to pack sandbags, or helping each other move what is able to be moved.
Interviews have shown a refreshing – but not surprising – lack of whingeing, of demands to know why this should be happening and why the people of these areas should be so unlucky.
“It is great to see so many people getting in and volunteering to help out. A crisis in Forbes brings out the best in people,” resident Andrew Kerr said earlier in the week.
Australians are prone to exhaustively cataloguing the problems with their country – the politicians, the economy, the house prices, the sporting failures – but should remember to recognise the best of the nation as well.
The flooding in the west has brought out the best in the national character: the desire to help each other, the distaste for woe-is-me melodramatics, the sense of community, the ability to shrug your shoulders and get on with things.
The floodwaters will recede in Forbes and Warren over the coming days.
But the qualities those waters bring out will not recede – and Australia is the better for it.