People Die. All The Time.

This wasn’t going to be my next blog post. I had planned to tell you all about the retro label maker I got for Christmas, about how much fun I was having labelling stuff. There were going to be photos. It was going to be funny. Really.

Then the whole place flooded. It wasn’t my place (I have one old uni friend in Brisbane but he was the only person I needed to check on when news came that the city was about to go under). It’s not even my country (I see myself as a visitor and I probably always will. I’m coming up for my three-year anniversary in Melbourne and I still have to convert dollars into pounds.) But the floods got under my skin and when fellow YA author Kate Gordon asked on Twitter: what can we do to help? I knew I wanted to do something.

A friend I spar with often challenged me on this. Why did I feel so sad about the floods? he wanted to know. People die all the time. I know he’s right – usually I put my hand in my pocket, pick out a tenner or twenty if it’s a really bad disaster, pop it into the relief fund and get on with my business. So, even though I was angry with him for calling me on it, and even though I was certain I was going to do everything I could, along with Kate Gordon, Katrina Germein and Fleur McDonald, to raise a proper big chunk of money for Queensland, there has always been a voice in the back of my head asking why this? why now? I remembered how I wondered why people were going so nuts over Princess Diana’s car crash – I suppose he was wondering the same thing about me now. But I didn’t feel nuts; I wasn’t crying or laying down flowers; I just wanted to do something.

When the terrible news came in about the floods in Rio, we were halfway through setting up the Authors For Queensland website and it stopped me in my tracks. Hundreds dead. Hundreds. The same friend didn’t take long to point this out – how was I going to spread around my new-found charitable self with all the horrible things going on in the world? He laid on the sarcasm very thick. Again, it angered me but it made me think. Was I doing something important, or not? Was it worth it, or not? And again why this, why now?

I didn’t have time to really figure out the answers. What started as a vague idea last Wednesday needed to go live on Monday morning. Kate, Katrina, Fleur and I had over 300 donations to upload onto a wordpress site…images to find, bios to copy and paste, queries to answer, publicity to organise. We had our own list of personal disasters in the mix – some of us were supposed to be on family holidays, some were tending to sick relatives, some had sick children; we had migraines and tummy bugs; we had mouths to feed, jobs to go to, cattle to muster (I definitely didn’t have cattle to muster…but to a townie like me that pretty much tops it). But from every setback we bounced back – as I discovered, there is nothing like the adrenalin of doing something you really think is worth doing. I obviously don’t see my writing in the same light – I rarely if ever get out of bed at dawn to do that.

Last night I went to bed before midnight for the first time since we began. I slept deeply; I had dreams. I didn’t get up at dawn or even when the children did – when I woke up to the smell of coffee I felt like I’d been hit by a truck. Was that the adrenalin taking its leave? Because I knew we’d done it, what we set out to achieve, even though it’s not over yet – the site has had loads of visitors, the donations are raking in hundreds of dollars – so now I’m still left with the why part.

During our trip to the UK last year, my daughter and I were swimming in the sea at Aldeburgh. I was holding her and the water was up to my shoulders. My friends and their children were swimming nearby; my partner was in deeper than we were; my son was watching from the beach. The waves were high and we were jumping them, laughing. My friend’s husband got out his camera and we turned round for a photo – about a second after he took it a huge wave came right over my head; it pushed me down and forwards…or backwards…the force was strong and I couldn’t tell. I was still holding my daughter tight but I was terrified that she’d panic and not be able to hold her breath. It felt like we were under for ages. I kept expecting my partner, who is a very strong swimmer, to put his arms around us and pull us back up to the surface. But he didn’t and even though the wave relented and we had a chance to come up for air, another one came crashing down on us a second later. It was the closest I’ve come to a horror story, holding onto my child but feeling like I wasn’t able to save her. Then there was the surface again, and air, and shore – hard, stony floor and I couldn’t get up. On my knees, I helped my daughter out and the waves kept bashing against my back. The water was in my eyes and my nose and the salt was stinging the back of my throat. But I was okay, and so was she.

It turned out that my friend and her little boy had been swept under as well, except she hadn’t been able to hold onto him. They were fine though – the little boy had even found it fun and wanted to go straight back in. The others had hardly been aware it was going on – not until they saw me staggering out, mascara running (it was only supposed to be a paddle), spluttering, comforting my daughter who was very shaken. And so because everyone was smiling and saying they didn’t even know we were in trouble, it became like a secret between my daughter and I, what it had really felt like: the power of the water, the helplessness of us. I imagined it every time I closed my eyes for days afterward and I know she did, too.

That’s what came into my head when the images of the floods became every news story on Australian television. I mean, our story is nothing – it was just a couple of innocent, English waves while people sat on the beach eating ice cream and wondering whether to have cod and chips or haddock and chips for dinner – but I’ll never forget the feeling of the water taking me down. When I saw the footage of the Queensland floods, when I read about the four year old boy they couldn’t save, I felt it profoundly. I can’t deny that my own trifling seaside memories are part of the why of the last few days. That fear. I would rather say that the why had nothing to do with me, my hang-ups or my ego, but if that were true I’d be setting up auctions for everything, or doing something with my life that actually helps other people.

It reminds me of that episode of Friends where Joey tells Phoebe that there is no such thing as a selfless act of charity: “The One Where Phoebe Hates SBS”. Throughout the day she tries to prove him wrong. Every time she thinks she’s pulled it off, Joey points out that if she feels good about doing it, she’s getting something out of it so it can’t be truly selfless. I can’t remember how the episode ends…

I’ll finish here. Thanks for reading. But I can’t go without asking you to have a browse at our auction. Have a bid – books, manuscript assessments, dinner for two, artwork, piano recitals, it’s a fantastic list. There’s something in it for everyone…if you know what I mean.