Shirley's Story
My husband and I were living in a house on the bank of the Colo River, three kilometres upstream of the Putty Road bridge at Mandalay. It had been raining heaviliy for three days, and when we woke up on the third day the river was rising rapidly. It was obvious that the house would be flooded and we would be cut off. I was nearly five months pregnant, and when the State Emergency Service floodboat called in to check on us, we decided that I should hitch a lift with them to Mandalay where I could be picked up by my parents and taken to their home in the Blue Mountains for the duration. John was to stack our belongings as high as he could and then stay with neighbours whose house was out of flood range
I got into the boat with Peter and his SES colleague, Kevin Jones, and we set off downstream. It was cold, windy and raining heavily, the current was strong and you couldn't see - and we hadn't gone far when we caught a power line and the boat flipped over. Peter and Kevin pulled me out from inside the upturned boat and sitting on top of it Peter grabbed a piece of rope from the water and tied himself to me. As it turned out, it was just as well he did that.
Before long we hit some trees and got thrown back into the water. Then we lost contact with the boat. We tried to swim ashore but the current was too strong. We were being buffeted by the current and dragged under the surface, and we were swallowing water. Before long I was exhausted and I couldn't breathe. I remember feeling that I was drowning: there was no pain or panic, just a gentle sense that this was a nice way to go.
Fortunately when we were about five kilometres below Mandalay, a boat arrived and we were pulled out of the water. I was unconcious, but Peter gave me mouth to mouth resuscitation and I came to. I remember Kevin's face was blue with the cold - a sign, I found out later, that he was on the verge of hypothermia - and I felt my baby stir inside me. That was reassuring.
We were taken to Kurrajong Hospital, wrapped up for warmth in horse blankets from a nearby stable, and I was admitted for the night with shock. A few days later, Peter and Kevin helped us to hose down the house and take the damaged furniture and furnishings outside. John and I found our wedding certificate, sadly damaged, in the mess. The water had been more than two metres deep inside the house, and not much was unaffected.
I gave birth to a healthy daughter in August, and we named her Peta Kerin after my rescuers. We went to the Royal Humanr Society function a few months later to see Peter get his Bronze Medal and Kevin his Certificate of Merit. Then we lost contact, until I wrote to Peter in 2003 to thank him and Kevin again and to see how they were.
By that stage Peter was living in Grafton and John and I were on the edge of Lake Macquarie, and we couldn't organise a reunion until this September, when Peter came down to an anniversary celebration for the Hawkesury SES.
Peter's Story
It all started routinely enough, like other flood operations to take people to safety during floods, but this time conditions were really difficult. This was the worst flood on the Colo since records began, and the flow was strong and turbulent and laden with debris. There was strong wind and heavy, driving rain, and I didn't see the wire sticking out of the water. It caught the winch bracket on the bow, turned the boat broadside to the current and flipped over.
We were in the water for nearly three hours, going through clumps of trees and trying to attract attention, swim ashore and avoid being washed between the boat and the trees. I remember, just before Garry and Ivan Jones arrived in their boat, that I was on the verge of giving up. They got to us just in time. Treading water while trying to support another person is very tiring.
I also remember vomiting a lot of water when we got to dry land, but we were otherwise alright and Kevin and I were discharged from hospital after a brief examination. Shirley was in worse shape, having been unconcious and suffering from shock, Kevin and I went straight back to the COlo SES unit's headquarters at Wilberforce where the Local Controller, Noel Powell, told us we should get back into a floodboat as soon as possible. "It's like falling off a horse," he said. "You have to get back on."
And we did, next day, and we found our boat tied up below the point where the Colo meets the Hawkesbury. It had lost its motor and was badly damaged, but the SES had it patched up and it was used for flood work for another 20 years.
I went on to succeed Noel as Local Controller, and Kevin took over from me when I became the SES Controler for the Clarence-Nambucca Region in 1998.
Out of the blue, in 2003, I got this very nice letter from Shirley. She wrote "I have often thought of you both over the years and am grateful still for what you did for me so many years ago. I hope life has been good to you."
It has been. Kevin and I have both had long, interesting careers in the SES, in my case for 40 years and in Kevin's for 30. We've both been involved in many flood and storm operations and we've done a lot of road rescues, pulling people out of wrecked cars, over the years. There have been many rewarding moments, but none have been more filled with relief than seeing Shirley take that first breath and open her eyes on the top of that upturned boat.
It was great to meet up with her again after all these years. She seems none the worse for having been tipped into the water and half drowned before being fished out. She even says she'd be happy to take a cruise on the Colo with me in an SES floodboat, but I think we'll do it when there's no flood. And I'll make sure we don't hit any wires.
