An open letter to the Prime Minister of Australia, the leader of our country.
Sunday March 6, 2022
Bundjalung Country, Northern Rivers, NSW
To the Prime Minister of Australia, the leader of our country.
We don’t know where to start, really. But we know that if we don’t speak out about what we have seen, people’s stories risk being forgotten.
We wish that you could smell the mud in Lismore today. The foul stench that suffocates the town. Laced with pesticides, sewerage and chemicals, it oozes petrol and oil and death. We want you to hear the conversations we’ve overheard and see the expressions on people’s faces who’ve lost everything but their lives.
You can’t even begin to comprehend this place because you’re not here.
This week our communities didn’t wait for you and your government to act. Instead, thousands upon thousands of people stood up and took charge. Everyday people became leaders, some of the strongest and most inspiring people we’ve ever witnessed. SES volunteers and boaties from around the region drove tinnies and jet skis through town, risking their lives to pull entire families out of roof cavities and elderly residents from shoulder-high water. Generous diabetics have donated insulin and locals have organised private helicopters to fly food, petrol and water to communities isolated by floodwaters and landslides.
Over the past few days hordes of people from Queensland to Victoria have coordinated delivery trucks and filled entire helicopter hangars with supplies. Local mud armies have marched into the streets to spray out the toxic mud from strangers’ homes. People who have lost everything are spending days on end co-ordinating help for others. They are bringing hope back into communities that had nothing left to hold onto.
Mr Stone’s comments this week were a display of incompetence so grotesque and disheartening that we are still trying to wrap our heads around it. This we will not forget.
We are tired and we are angry. But we will not give up.
We started Revive the Northern Rivers a year ago to share the stories of this region. The important voices in our community need to be heard. Local Elders who carry yarns about Country that are thousands of years old, children who are speaking out about anthropogenic climate change, and the stories of those who have endured the hardest days of their lives this week. We are listening to them and they want action.
The time for your government to act is now.
To close this letter we’d like to use a phrase shared with us by Mindy Woods, a Bundjulung dubai (woman) of the widjabul- wia bul clan. It really sums up our week:
ngulliboo muggi all of us strong
Yours Sincerely,
Revive the Northern Rivers
(Tom Wolff & Shaya Lambrechtsen)