Richard Pluukard and his wife knew their home was in a flood zone when they purchased it more than a decade ago, but the opportunity to save more than $80K on the purchase price was incentive enough to sway their minds in favour of the Phoenix Lane home.
“We got a good 13 years here before we ran into trouble,” Richard said.
The Queenslander was one of nearly 300 homes in the Gympie region to be inundated although, at already 2 metres off the ground, Richard thought, right up until the Saturday morning, they might escape the worst of it.
But, that wasn’t to be.
By the time the river peaked at 22.96m at 3am on Sunday, 27 February, their family home had all the furniture and even some of the fixtures removed.
Richard’s parents moved to the area in 1993, so he knew what a Gympie flood looked like, when it makes it into the main street and cuts the Bruce Hwy.
So last February he knew he needed to be prepared.
When he was sure the water would make it into the home, he even removed the kitchen cabinet fronts to preserve them.
After the water receded, Richard and his family looked into flooding grants from both the State and Federal governments, both of which Richard knew from experience would be lengthy processes.
They also secured a $3000 grant from the Gympie Rotary Club, which went towards purchasing cement sheeting which Richard decided to use for the full interior of the home, making the home more flood proof in the event of future deluges.
“People turn their nose up at it for the inside of the house, but with a couple of coats of paint and some wooden trim, it does the job,” he said.
When the clean up began Richard said they stripped the interior back to the stud walls.
This was before they had even been approved for grants from the governments.
That didn’t stop Richard who started to lift and renovate the home.
“We didn’t know if we would even be eligible, but we knew the work had to be done, sooner, rather than later, so we took out a loan and got stuck into raising the house,” he said.
And he’s glad he did, because he said 8 months after the event, there was still no sign of movement in that department from any of the agencies.
“We were in a better spot, financially, than most of our neighbours, who are only now starting to get the work done. We couldn’t afford to wait. We knew we wanted to be back here where we can continue raising our family,” he said.
Richard has raised his home to just over 4m off the ground, but it is still under the recommended 100 year flood mark from Gympie Regional Council.
But to raise it further is not feasible – requiring all sorts of engineering signoffs, and would push the peak of the home past a 9m height limit currently imposed.
With the home nearing completion, he now has a commanding view of his neighbourhood.
“We won’t be needing a gym membership anytime soon,” he joked about the number of stairs at the rear of the building.
Richard said that if he had waited, like many of his neighbours had, for approval for grants and disaster relief payments, the family would likely still be living with their relatives, with their family home simply a partially completed, uninhabitable shell.
He was incredibly grateful to Gympie Rotary Club and the Rotary Australia World Community Service (RAWCS) for the $3000 grant which was distributed by the group within days of the flooding.
Brad Quilliam, National Project Supervisor of RAWCS popped into Gympie last Friday to see how Richard, and other local recipients of RAWCS grants were getting on, after 12 months.
“We’re really pleased with how the work has gone, and happy that Richard and his family have had such a great outcome,” Brad said.
Brad and past president of Gympie Rotary Club, Karen Gresham, met with Richard in the ruins of his home just after the floods, and remembers a thick layer of mud coating the floors and most of the way up the walls.
He said the improvements in just 12 months have been remarkable
“You wouldn’t recognise it as the same house,” he said.
