Dave is Captain of Darwin River Volunteer Bushfire Brigade

“Hi, I’m Dave from Darwin River, member of the Darwin River Volunteer Bushfire Brigade, or should we call ourselves now the Water Brigade. This is just a little talk on what happened out here from the 15^th to around about the 20^th of this month (February 2011).

“It all started off with a heavy rain depression centred over Palmerston, about 50km from here, which later on developed on the 17^th into Cyclone Carlos, and it dumped the most rain we have seen out here for a long time; the rivers and everything rose very, very quickly and we were isolated completely. This is the highest the rivers have ever been that people know. We have people who have lived out here for 30 or 40 years who have never seen the river so high.

"The major road out of here into town is Hopewell [Road] which goes across Berry Creek. Now, Berry Creek flooded up and down at various times, anything up to a metre of water over the road there, so that cut people off from town and an auxiliary road out of here is a dirt road and once the river dropped on Leonino Road they can get through on that one. The trouble was, once the first four wheel drives got through that road cut up and became almost impassable for two wheel drive vehicles. Everyone out here was actually ... the best thing to do was to stay at home. People never went to work out here; a lot of people, my wife one of them, some did go to work, they did get to work, they worked very hard doing the flood work out here.

“Brigade members from our Brigade, Cox Pen, Livingstone and Berry Springs got into action and they did a fantastic job to keep the locals informed as to what was going on, what was happening, how to get out, evacuating ... there were up to 20 homes evacuated on the Darwin River area, ten of those homes were flooded and inundated anything from ankle deep to a metre of water went through them, so it was fairly busy removing people.

“Even our own fire station, we had around about knee depth water running through there. One of our young volunteers had moved in there with his caravans ready to set up as caretaker there, so the panic to get his ... we were going through axle deep water in the four wheel drives and half floating caravans to get them out. We loaded trailers up and got all his gear out of there and took them around to peoples’ places.

“One down point about the floods is that while we were moving him out, by the time we got back to the station someone had gone back there and flogged part of his gear. It happens, but it’s not nice.

“The main trouble we had, once we got cut off there was no access whatever to emergency services in town. We couldn’t get flood boats, we couldn’t even get sandbags, When we contacted an emergency number in there we were recommended to go to the hardware shop and get some sandbags, but it’s a bit hard going to a hardware shop through a metre of water to get some sandbags when you haven’t got flood boats, or anything.

“We operated quite well keeping an eye on people ... our Brigade, we got eleven people out of vehicles out of flooded waterways and four or five other vehicles out of potholes in roads that collapsed and were too deep for the normal little two wheel drive vehicles to get through and they got stuck. You couldn't move off the major roads to help anyone on side tracks or anything because that was impassable and everything became just a quagmire.

“We operated there ... our radios were going really well but then when Carlos hit we had a blackout and our main channel out here is worked by 240 volts, so it went down – our transmitting tower went down and we relied on a new one that was set up here recently, Channel 8 that works on solar power. Solar power is good when you haven’t got cyclones and rainy conditions because the batteries slowly deteriorate there, so we were limited what use we had of that.

“With Cox Pen and some other areas around there all the phones went down, including the mobiles and they couldn’t get any phone communications out there whatsoever, so Ray (Captain of Cox Peninsula Volunteer Bushfire Brigade) out at Cox Pen, he was the only one we could contact. He did a fantastic job out there going from Pioneer Creek (on Cox Peninsula Road) right back to Cox Pen ... this area did from Pioneer Creek back to the [Stuart] Highway.

“There was one medical evacuation, a lady was very sick, we had to get her out here and the gentleman was only in a two wheel drive vehicle, and at that time Berry Creek was up to point five of a metre, so we couldn’t get two wheel drive vehicles, or other vehicles through there to get him out. So we escorted him around to Chibnall Road, which is a bypass road, but it was very, very muddy and we had to escort him there out to the highway and show him the way out and make sure he got out there and back on to the highway into Darwin and take his wife into hospital. She finished up quite ok, so it was a good finishing.

“With other evacuations, there was a handicapped lady, we had to get her out of her house. It ended up going under, or flood inundated right around it. She was removed to town. Other people would have no evacuation centres later on in the place to put anybody, and the locals out here all got together and houses that were high and dry, the verandas got well used that night with swags and everything on them. I don’t know if there was much sleeping going on some nights, but the main concern seemed to be cigarettes and beer.

“As of now, to my knowledge there has been no-one injured, which was the greatest achievement, I think with the volunteer organisations, but we do hope that in the future there will be more interdepartmental communications so we know exactly what’s going on. It wasn’t until the 18^th (Friday) or 19^th (Saturday) that we finally got the police out here. The helicopters were flying over the place, but they weren’t locals, they didn’t know what was going on. The Fire Service (Bushfires NT) had a helicopter flying out here and they called down to actually land in my back block and I went there and we communicated out there and went through maps and that, and where people were and what people were wondering, and I went around and did a complete survey of all the houses on ... that were threatened and that.

“Even one place we had to get a lady out, but this was when the water was rising before it finally came up. It was that deep at that time, we tried to get in to her place and to go down the road, it was half way to where her driveway goes in and water was coming over the bonnet of a Toyota Landcruiser (Grass Fire Unit), which was time to back out, and the only way she could get out was to actually walk around through higher ground over fences and everything through her neighbours' blocks to actually get out to the road to ... even in that situation she was up to her ... between the waist and chest high in water getting out there, but we couldn’t walk people out via the river because there could have been freshies (crocodiles), there could have been salties (crocodiles), there were a few snapping handbags floating around in the water out there, and I hope they were freshies, but I think they were salties, so we took no risk with those because the crocs were really coming on with the floods ... I think the barramundi and that were all moving up the creeks.

“At one stage down on Hopewell Road at Berry Creek when we had point five of a metre, half a metre of water over the road we had fishermen clinging to the bridge railing out there, fishing off the bridge. It was up to their waist, up to waist high and they were flat out hanging onto the bridge and they were still out there fishing.

“One vehicle even tried to go through almost a metre of water and got washed off the road, but vey luckily he got washed off the road probably 50 to 100 metres before the main creek. If he had gone into the main creek it would’ve cost a life, I’m nearly sure of it. That time there they ended up getting a flood boat from in town to get him off from the top of his vehicle and get him out of there.

“It is good to see volunteer organisations co-operating like they did with the locals, and the feedback I’ve got the locals have been very, very appreciative of what we’ve tried to do. It was long hours; we actually started about five, half past five in the morning to go down, check all the river heights and that, and as people ringing up “can we get through?”, “can we do this?”, “what’s the river like?” to give some idea to them.

“Plus I’d like to add here, the ABC was magnificent, because they kept on contacting me and asking for reports all the time and they were giving out reports. They gave out my phone number, which I didn’t mind – my bushfires phone number, which I didn’t mind, or flood phone number as it was then. They gave out the phone number and people could contact me for assistance, or contact our Brigade, or I contact other Brigades for assistance. It gave a point out here where communications go to the one point.

“I think in the future, somewhere out here in these cases ... well, Batchelor’s where they are ... the Batchelor headquarters (Bushfires NT) did a fantastic job down there, but in cases like this you’re going to have some organisational local point with [phone] numbers known to the public and everything that they can actually access instead of ... when they’re trying to ring the 1800 number in town all they were told to do was evacuate, and that was actually told to people 40 or 50 metres above any look like flood height.

“Most people out here got messages on their phones – mobiles and land lines – but there were five people I know of, four of them with houses that went under never got communications whatsoever, nothing came on their mobile phones, so I don’t know whether it goes by where the account is, or how they do this, but they got no message on their mobile phones or their land lines.

“But the main thing when we were evacuating was a lot of people didn’t realise to go and turn all the power off at the main fuse box. They were leaving their houses on, and as I said to them, “If you’ve got to wait 24 hours, 48 hours, if your fridge is not being used, if the water goes through your house you’ve lost everything anyhow, but you’re better off to switch everything off and if it does go through you’ve got some chance of rescuing some equipment you’ve got in your place. If the power goes off, you’ve had it. A lot of the places around here, the way they’re wired which is quite good; they’re actually wired from the roof down (from an old ex-sparkie, that’s standard wiring practice – Frank) so the lowest point is your power points, but then people don’t realise that the fridges and all that sit on the deck, so power goes in there and they lose it.

“On another thing; with the Council, we tried to get onto the Council to get signs out here, but the Council couldn’t get the signs out here and signage ran out. They couldn’t get signs anywhere; even in town they didn’t have enough road signs – road closed signs, road warning signs and ... we got some road repair signs out which could give people some things or run around with the danger diamonds, just put those in the middle of the road where the road’s disappeared. There were places here with causeways, the tar came off the top of the causeway and actually the pipe’s thinner than the causeway and you had pieces shin deep and probably going right across the road, with holes in the road, which if cars hit it they were having trouble.

“It was an experience, again. I’ve worked in floods before from as far down as Cooma – Monaro area with floods down there, floods in Grafton, and floods up here now. I’ve had floods before, but nothing like we had this time. But, everyone survived, everyone did a fantastic job up here and it’s great to see that a Bushfire Brigade can be used in case of emergency, even if it is floods.

"Thank you.”

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Interviewer was frank Dunstan