VICTORY WITHOUT TRIUMPH IN HAY

Hay is situated half way along an old stock route called the Long Paddock that stretches from Echuca in Victoria to Wilcannia in New South Wales. It is a town with a history of welcoming travelers. Shearers arrived seasonally and swagmen intermittently.

During the Second World War trains unloaded hundreds of German Jews who, having escaped from the Nazis to England, were transported across the world to the outback town as enemy aliens. Sanity finally prevailed after Winston Churchill's intervention and the Dunera Boys were released to fight Hitler both in the Australian and British forces.

As with most of the outback's stock routes and train lines, the Long Paddock follows a traditional Aboriginal walking trail that relied on the most precious of outback resources, water.

Water is what held Tommie and I here three weeks ago. We were trapped by the outflow from the Darling and the Murrumbidgee Rivers. We couldn't go north through Broken Hill or south past Deniliquin.

Upstream Wagga Wagga was in crisis and the same Murrumbidgee waters were expected in Hay a week or so later.

Hay is so flat that handbreaks are redundant.  When it floods the water spreads like butter on a hot pancake.

The landscape does not invite extravagance of any kind. If the level of anxiety in the town was rising with the river it was not noticeable. Like water to lime, floods have cemented communities like Hay together, adding strength to the collective spirit.

I have always stayed a few days here when I'd intended only one. The sky is so big, so blue. The Wok in Hay does a great noodle dish. Actually it does a great pizza and fish and chips as well. The owners, John and Lon, remember Tommie and I from previous trips. It's nice.

During that visit I met old Jeff and Ray who scream around in their geriatric-mobiles and have lived in Hay all their lives. When Jeff says something he adds "isn't that right Ray." When Ray makes a point "isn't that right Jeff" concludes his sentence. They were excited about the flood coming. It is an event.

So when I arrived back this week and heard the town had weathered the flood I expected a buoyant atmosphere. It wasn't. At the Wok in Hay John explained why.

The community had prepared for the flood by strengthening the levee that surrounds the town. It proved to be a formidable barrier with three feet of embankment spare after the river peaked.

But victory over the river lacked a sense of triumph. As the waters approached so too did the S.E.S, the State Emergency Services, enforcing total control over the town, over people who had seen everything the river could do. They brought in their own caterers, helicopters and air conditioning units. They evacuated locals who would have once passed sandbags to each other or cooked meals through the night for their neighbours. As a kid John had been one of the Bank Men who monitored the rising waters.

Says John, 'kids are being taught to leave" when a threat approaches. In fact the S.E.S handed out lovely new sleeping bags if they got evacuated, some lining up three times for a bag valued at $130 a pop.

I have always marveled at the strength of communities to bond in a crisis. It becomes part of the town's folklore and collective soul.

The people of Hay, or at the least the ones I spoke to, saw the C.E.S intrusion as an attack on the town's autonomy.

The levee, built by the community with good local clay, withstood the flood. According to John, the C.E.S now want to remove and rebuild it because their engineers weren't involved. It can't be relied upon they say. Yep, that's the levee that worked.

The people eating the various cuisines at the Wok in Hay all had the same message. That the town's integrity had been violated. God only knows what Jeff would have thought. Isn't that right Ray.