Let’s beat the sludge: Angela Beutel and Heather Watson working together to help out flood-affected towns that are still cleaning up mud, by donating much-needed items.
Photo by
Adair Winder
Community members from Rochester have banded together to create flood relief boxes for the towns of Woodburn, Coraki and Broadwater, who were all badly impacted during the Northern NSW floods that occurred earlier this year.
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Angela Beutel came up with the concept when she realised that a lot of the smaller towns that have been affected by flooding may not be receiving as many donations as the bigger towns such as Lismore.
“Rochester is a smaller town, just like these towns, and we want to help them out as much as we can,” she said.
“A lot of these towns are still covered in mud and sludge, they are still recovering and re-building, and that’s why I thought it would be a good idea to get involved.”
Ms Beutel presented the idea at the Rochester Community Breakfast.
She explained that a number of businesses in Rochester were incredibly receptive to the idea and instantly put their hand up to have a donation box in one of their stores.
Donation boxes have been left around town at Cafe Rochester, the IGA, Rochester Hotel, the newsagent, the Community House foyer and Parsons.
Another box is soon going to be installed at Mitre 10.
“We’ve had more donation boxes requested than I had anticipated. I thought we’d have about six at most,” Ms Beutel said.
Donations welcome: Boxes have been left around town at Cafe Rochester, the IGA, Rochester Hotel, the newsagent, the Community House foyer and Parsons. Another box is soon going to be installed at Mitre 10.
Photo by
Adair Winder
In terms of donations, Ms Beutel said they were looking for cleaning products, hygiene products, first aid items and kitchen goods, rather than clothes.
Detergents, rubber gloves, disinfectants, sunscreen, toothbrushes, garbage bags and band-aids are just some of the priority items that are needed in flood-affected communities.
“We’ve already had four boxes of pharmaceuticals and hygiene products donated from Tongala, our local dentist donated three boxes of toothpaste, and another trailer load of supplies is coming from Echuca,” Ms Beutel said.
“The Uniting Church really helped us to get the word out by publishing a notice in their newsletter, which has been a great help to us.”
Anyone who is interested in donating can do so by visiting one of the many donation boxes in Rochester.
Donations will be taken until the end of the month.
