“YOU can only fall down and graze your knees so many times before it does start to get you down a little bit. But to have them here today, it was inspirational for my parents, neighbours and my little girl.”
Clinton Ewins breathed a sigh of relief as he saw members of the defence force coming down his driveway on Wednesday morning, sandbags in tow.
A lot of his Tyntynder property was already under water due to flooding from the river combined with the recent rains.
“We may have lost all of our crop, we’ve moved our sheep to higher ground, the cows are wallowing in water because there is just nowhere else to put them,” Mr Ewins told The Guardian.
Mr Ewins is a single dad caring for his seven-year-old daughter Juliette, who has special needs, as well his elderly parents who have cancer and Alzheimer’s.
He explained Juliette was someone who needed to be constantly reassured and a stressful event such as a flood can be particularly overwhelming.
“You just have to reassure her that yes the water is still coming, but don’t worry because we will be safe, I’ll piggyback you and we can put you in the boat,” he said.
But the arrival of the men and women from the defence force at their property gave Juliette such excitement, the stress of the floods was relieved for a little bit.
“Juliette being a girl, it inspired her, she said, ‘me be army girl too?’ and they told her ‘you can be anything you want’,” Mr Ewins said.
One person from the defence force even gave Juliette a souvenir from the day – a Velcro badge from his uniform.
“She felt like Supergirl,” Mr Ewins said.
Mr Ewins said his neighbours were also very appreciative of the defence force’s efforts.
He said it had “actually cracked me with tears of thankfulness”.
“Just the relief on faces – I have seen the elderly do happy dances of joy to think that, ‘oh finally someone has actually come and taken note’, and these guys were so eager to help, they were an inspiration to Juliette and it just made my day.”
