River Murray Recovery Stories
Julie Ahrens · 56 min
When the 2022 River Murray floods threatened to fracture Berri's community, a retired teacher-turned-grassroots organiser transformed a borrowed shopfront and a borrowed red couch into a pop-up wellbeing centre that held her town together — one cup of tea at a time.
When the 2022 River Murray floods threatened Berri, the town faced more than rising water. A Defence Cell Wall went up along the riverfront, schools closed, the river shut down for boating, and a blanket of uncertainty settled over the community. While emergency managers focused on infrastructure, something else was missing: someone to talk to. Someone to ask if people were okay.
Julie Ahrens, a retired teacher who had chosen the Riverland decades earlier and watched it shape her family, recognised the gap. A few days before Christmas, she received an unexpected phone call. Wellbeing SA had some funding and wanted to know if she could do anything with it. Julie said yes.
She borrowed a shopfront in the main street, borrowed a red couch, and opened the Public Living Room. Four days a week, 10 to 4, she and her volunteers made tea, put out Play-Doh, invited artists and musicians, and held space. People came because they needed connection, not crisis services. A woman burst into tears over a cup of tea, just from being heard. Businesses donated sausages. Young artists got work. The community showed up because they wanted to help but didn't know how.
What Julie built wasn't a traditional disaster response. It was a place where people could laugh, make art, feel safe, and remember they weren't alone. Eighteen months later, some families still had no secure housing. But the town had learned something else: ordinary people could act without permission. They could show up, listen, and hold each other through the thing that was breaking them.
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