Helen Haines (Indi, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to applaud the communities in the Upper Murray as they rebuild from the summer's destruction, a rebuild that deals with the additional challenge of COVID-19. In Corryong, the Upper Murray Community Recovery Committee and the smaller committees in Walwa, Cudgewa, Biggara, Towong, Tintaldra, Berringama, Lucyvale, Nariel Valley and Thowgla Valley are working to address the impact of the bushfire.

In Walwa a few weeks ago I visited the tiny primary school to discuss the progress of its eight students with the principal, Mr Steven Lynch. A couple of hours later I met him again at the Walwa Recovery Committee meeting, where he represented both the school and the tennis club.

At the Bush Nursing Centre I spoke with the CEO and nurse practitioner, Sandi Grieve. She too was later at the committee meeting as was the local policeman, Simon McKenzie; as was the CFA captain, David Hanna, also the president of the hall committee. Around the table were a dozen others, all in multiple capacities, serving Rotary, the football club, the cemetery trust and goodness knows what else.

In those rooms I witnessed a community who had swapped the N95 masks of summer for the handmade cloth masks of a COVID winter—multiple masks, multiple hats. I witnessed the initiative, the intelligence and the heart of people gathering to rebuild better and to safeguard their communities into the future.