Volunteer Felicity Sloman shows a poster outlining the expectations of a community-led recovery effort.
Photo by
Bree Harding
The team of volunteers leading the recovery at Ruffy is determined to keep it a community-led affair.
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What that means is the recovery gets led by those who were affected.
“We all know what happened in Marysville; they had all these external services come in who took over everything,” volunteer Felicity Sloman said.
“It was a bit a like a rooster in a hen house. The rooster comes in and all the hens scatter. The community is the hens.”
The idea is to keep the area inside the hall and courtyard a safe space for the community.
“If any external services come in, they go into the paddock next door, sit under trees and help people and not come in and disturb the fragile people,” Felicity said.
“They’re there to support us, not to take over,” volunteer Colleen Furlanetto said.
“We say when we are ready for whatever it is they’re offering,” Felicity added.
The hay depot can be accessed from the main road of Ruffy.
Photo by
Bree Harding
The hay depot set up in a farmer’s burnt out paddock. Volunteers are gunning for him to receive a discount or waiver on his council rates notice for facilitating the operation.
Photo by
Bree Harding
The News was chaperoned to Ruffy by a media escort on the public information team at the incident control centre with clearance to get us past a police road block.
Felicity said that after the initial flurry of interest from media in the days immediately after the disaster, there had been other outlets requesting access whom they had denied.
“When we heard it was the Shepp News, we wanted the opportunity to thank the Shepparton community,” she said.
She gave a special mention to Shepparton artist Tank, his fiancée, Meg Pethybridge, and the Rotary Club of South Shepparton for gathering donations from several Shepparton businesses and individuals and then personally delivering them even further than Euroa and Longwood.
“Trelly from Trelly’s over there has been a massive support for us … he’s a fella who sees a need, asks ‘What do you need?’ and comes up with it,” Colleen said.
“The Shepparton community, the Shepp council, what they’ve done with the relief effort is to be commended and the support they’ve given to the littler shires because of their size and their experience with the floods.
“The amount of donations that have come in from the Shepparton community has been amazing, really amazing.”
So what do the people of Ruffy need from here on in?
Felicity kept it simple and to the point.
“Lot of generators are required and a lot of people still haven’t got water,” she said.
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