Beyond the Deluge
Tony Hawkins · 41 min
A veteran RFS captain reveals how grassroots community action — not official agencies — became the real backbone of flood recovery in the isolated Wollombi Valley.
You don't have to be in crisis to call.
Tony Hawkins has lived in Wollombi for over 30 years. He's a captain with the RFS and now works as a bushfire consultant, training cultural burning practitioners and community resilience coordinators across the Hunter region. When the 2022 flood hit in July, it was his second major disaster in three years, following the terrifying 2019 bushfires that left him shaken in ways past fires never had.
During the 2022 flood, Tony watched the unofficial response from community members outpace the official agencies. An RFS volunteer brought a tanker without being tasked by the SES; local people showed up with equipment and labour without being asked. Tony used a Bobcat to clear sodden mattresses from the tavern and village businesses, because he recognised that without them cleaned up and functioning, people wouldn't come back and the town would hollow out. What struck him most was that nobody refused to help. People who weren't friends before worked side by side, differences dissolved by the need to do the job.
Tony draws a hard line between what agencies can control and what they cannot. You can't stop a flood. What matters is what happens after: the cleanup, yes, but more importantly, giving people permission to talk about what they've lived through. He's learned from post-fire recovery work in the Blue Mountains that many people have never been given space to tell their story, and that opportunity can be the first step toward processing what happened. He's concerned that knowledge about living safely with floods and fire is disappearing as old-timers pass away without passing on what they know. His message to communities is clear: don't sit back and complain. Take matters into your own hands. Ask what you can learn from it, and what you can do differently next time.
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