Helping hands from outside Maitland: the 1955 flood
A feature of the great flood of 1955 was the hundreds of people who descended on Maitland from far and wide to help in the City’s hour of need. They came from other parts of the Hunter, including Newcastle, Cessnock and Dungog, and from Sydney and Wollongong. Singleton also received much help from both within and outside the Hunter. A large number of helpers were miners from the Hunter coalfields, but there were many others as well. Employers and unionists, traditional adversaries, joined forces in the effort.
David Russell’s story
Among those who came to Maitland was David Russell, a 20-year-old university student from Epping who was spending his summer on National Service at the RAAF base at Rathmines. David was an aircraftsman, the equivalent of an army private, and he was not enjoying his training. It consisted of a lot of square-bashing (marching) and not much that was useful to somebody who thought he was there to learn how to defend an airfield.
David Russell, aircraftsman
(David Russell collection)
The call for help came from Maitland on the morning of 24 February: the evidence from Singleton indicated that the flood was going to be a big one. David and a dozen others, grateful to escape the monotony at Rathmines, piled onto the back of a truck and headed off. On arrival they were immediately deployed on raising and relocating furniture for people living near the Central Business District. Items like heavy Crossley Shelvadore fridges were either raised in situ or trucked across the river to Lorn. The young men worked for about 15 hours on their first day, but at about 4am on 25 February the river burst its bank near the Maitland Court House and sent a torrent through that building and others nearby. That ended the furniture-protecting work.
Severe flooding occurred in the upper part of High St. Some terrace dwellings across the street from the Court House collapsed, and to the east a Woolworths store on the river side of the street (now the Reject Shop) was another casualty: it had shelving seven feet (nearly two metres) above floor level onto which items could be lifted when a flood threatened. The water burst through the back door of the store and built up deep inside before the front door blew out under the pressure and the stacked items were washed away. Nearby, a scour hole swallowed a truck.
Jim Lucey (photographer), High St near the Maitland Court House during the 1955 flood
(Jim Lucey Collection, University of Newcastle)
David and company relocated to the Maitland Public School, south of High St between Church and Elgin streets, where many people were in effect refugees camping in the classrooms. There the aircraftsmen set up a first aid station where people had cut feet bandaged and other injuries treated. From David’s point of view the number who had cuts to their feet, caused by walking barefoot through the floodwaters, was remarkable.
One episode in particular stands out in David’s memory from the three or four days he spent at the school. A woman, heavily pregnant, could not safely be taken to the Maitland Hospital across the raging torrent of what is now the Oakhampton Floodway, because the Long Bridge was damaged and not trafficable. Parts of it had collapsed. Somebody sought help using the radio the aircraftsmen had with them, and before long a plane dropped a crate containing pamphlets on how to conduct the birth of a baby. The crate also contained items that would be needed for the procedure.
A first-year Sydney University medical student in the group read the pamphlets and gave instructions to his fellows on what they would have to do to help. Everyone understood that they had a big responsibility: it promised to be a tension-filled, even frightening experience. Hopefully there would be no complications.
Fortunately, the flood fell to the point that a surfboat was able to ferry the woman to the hospital for the birth. Word came through later that the baby had arrived safely and that mother and child were both well.
Eventually the aircraftsmen returned to Rathmines, where they were shunned by all and sundry for not having had showers or baths for their five days away! They had to bathe, wash their clothes and go on parade, dripping wet, before they were deemed acceptable in the polite society of the RAAF. But they had had the satisfaction of having helped Maitland at a time of great tribulation, and without having to deliver any babies!
David Russell in recent times
(David Russell collection)
Malcolm Bailey’s story
Another helper was Malcolm Bailey, 17 years old and about to start his university education. Shortly after the flood’s peak at Maitland, Malcolm hitched a ride up the highway on a truck organised by the Trades Hall Council in Union St, Newcastle. Some of the men on the truck, including Malcolm, were dropped off outside Lorn, given shovels and told to look for an elderly man somewhere off Glenarvon Rd: his house had been buried in sand, mud and debris. The Novocastrians were to give him whatever help they could.
Malcolm and others from the truck set off across the drying mud and sand deep on the floodplain. There was much debris, made up of the wrecked houses and sheds of the Bolwarra Flats, and there was severe scouring as well. Surprisingly, the ground was not hard to walk on. Soon they found the man, a farmer, sitting forlornly on the chimney of his house about 60 centimetres above the now much raised ground level. Nothing else of it could be seen. The man had a request: he wanted the helpers to dig down, get into the house and retrieve a dressing gown he had been given not long before.
So the Samaritans from Newcastle started digging. After a few hours they found the window of the man’s bedroom, unbroken, and they entered the house without difficulty. The floor was covered by muddy water about three feet (almost a metre) deep. In the wardrobe they found the mud-soaked dressing gown, retrieved it and presented it to its owner.
Malcolm thought the man’s request was a strange one: there were surely more serious matters that he had to deal with, especially the difficulties and the hard work he would have to face in getting his house back into a liveable condition. But the request had to be honoured. It was not for mere outsiders to question it. His need at the time the helpers arrived was for a small comfort. The bigger matters he would have to confront could wait.
About 14 years later and by then a qualified civil engineer, Malcolm had become the Public Works Resident Engineer (Morpeth) in charge of the development of the Lower Hunter Flood Mitigation Scheme. There he was co-ordinating the building of some of the final structures of the Scheme, including the floodgates on Ironbark Creek at the edge of the Hexham wetlands and the Lorn Diversion Bank, and part of his job involved consulting with nearby farmers on these engineering works. One day, by chance, he ran into the man he and his fellows had helped in 1955, and the two of them had a cup of tea and a convivial game of chess while they shared memories of their earlier encounter. The old man, now 94, had got his life and home into order after the flood and was still living in his house which was now in a saucer-shaped hollow in a much-changed landscape. The house is no longer there.
During their discussion it transpired that the old man had been a British soldier during the Boer War. He had risen from the ranks to become a commissioned officer, a rare thing. The dressing gown had been an 80th birthday present from his sister, who had died only a few days after giving it to him. So the gown had sentimental value; it was more than just a garment in a wardrobe. After cleaning it up, the old man had worn it every day since 1955.
Small things as well as big things matter in dealing with disasters that affect human beings. And there are matters that need to be attended to immediately as well as matters for later.
Malcolm Bailey (centre), with colleagues Bill Dobie (left) and Eugene Kazimierchuk consulting a map of the lower Hunter
(NSW Public Works)
References
Bailey, Malcolm, personal communication.
Bailey, Malcolm, Salt of the Earth: a Skinny Book of Short Stories, Yarnspinners Press, Wentworth Falls, 2018.
Keys, Chas,, Maitland Speaks: the Experience of Floods, Floodplain Publishing, Newcastle, 2020.
Keys, Chas ‘Our past: outsider’s story of help during the 1955 flood’, Maitland Mercury, 30 July, 2021.
Russell, David, personal communication.
