Tony Siviour
The 38-Kilometre Line: Tony Siviour and the Race to Save Renmark
Tony Siviour led his island town through Australia's second-largest flood in 152 years by making one decision at a time.
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Kintsugi Studio
Tony Siviour
Tony Siviour led his island town through Australia's second-largest flood in 152 years by making one decision at a time.
Hear this story
Tony Siviour grew up in Barmara in the Riverland, left for work on the West Coast, and came back 13 years ago to lead Renmark Paringa Council. In early October 2022, he returned from a family holiday in Mooloolaba to face what would become Australia's second-largest flood in 152 years. But Renmark was not like other towns. It sits on an island surrounded by a 38-kilometre levee system that crosses 350 private landowners. The town had two weeks less warning than communities downstream. When Tony sat down with the SES CEO and Department of Environment and Water officials in his office, they sat in silence for what felt like an hour, knowing exactly what was coming.
What followed was 12 weeks of non-stop work. Tony's team carted in excess of 150,000 tonnes of clay to reinforce the levees, right as Renmark experienced its single biggest rainfall event in recorded history on 23 October. When the stormwater system threatened to flood the town from within, crews sealed 29 outlets and poured concrete into pipes that could not hold the pressure. Every day from 13 October to 13 January, Tony's emergency team met for exactly one hour. They identified the biggest problem and acted. No house behind the formal levee network was damaged. The turning point came when they deployed a Defence Cell barrier on the riverfront with help from Costa Group's Pacific Islander workers, giving the community visible proof that the infrastructure was in place. Tony admits he should have stepped away during the event for rest and recovery but did not want to leave. Two years on, the town is nearly back to normal. The real work now sits with government: figuring out who maintains and pays for a levee system managed across 350 private owners when there is no flood.
“We didn't tender this work. We didn't have time to tender this work. So this is probably in excess of $5 million worth of earth moving, which was done by essentially all the contractors giving us their rates, their availability, and then we sent letters of offer. And we did all that within 5 days.”
“I should have stepped away, but I didn't. I didn't want to step away. Like, I wanted to be there every day. Yeah, that's definitely a learning for me, is that in the middle of an event you need downtime.”
“Early on we had to centralise our communications. That was paramount. We had to get in front of any negativity and just talk facts, and that's essentially what we did.”
The hero, today
When the water flows down the river and the projections keep changing, communities are not always surprised it will flood, but they are surprised how big it becomes. The earthmoving contractors in Renmark gave their rates and availability without tender, allowing five million dollars of critical levee work to be coordinated in five days instead of three to four months. Having good data about which levees to work on first is essential, but explaining digital elevation models to people worried about their own street is one of the hardest parts of flood response. Centralising communications and delivering facts twice a week to the community through local ABC radio built trust in a way that sensational media reports about unspecified holes and unmarked structures could never damage. No house behind the formal levee network was impacted, and the community learned that when council stepped up with visible action, people started waving at the trucks and wanting to be part of the effort.
Yes. Tony Siviour is a real person who shared their own story in their own words. Kintsugi Heroes is a not-for-profit that shares first-person stories of overcoming adversity, told with the person's consent.
Kintsugi Heroes, a registered Australian not-for-profit. Every story is shared with the hero's own consent and reviewed under Kintsugi Heroes' trauma-informed content standard before it goes public.
When the water flows down the river and the projections keep changing, communities are not always surprised it will flood, but they are surprised how big it becomes.
The earthmoving contractors in Renmark gave their rates and availability without tender, allowing five million dollars of critical levee work to be coordinated in five days instead of three to four months.
Having good data about which levees to work on first is essential, but explaining digital elevation models to people worried about their own street is one of the hardest parts of flood response.
John Milham (Host) · 00:00
Kintsugi Heroes brings you the following River Murray flood recovery story, jointly funded by the Commonwealth and South Australian governments under the Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements. To find out more about this podcast, head to kintsugiheroes.com.au. The 2022 River Murray floods in South Australia were caused by record water inflows from the Murray-Darling Basin due to heavy upstream rainfall. The slowly rising floodwaters inundated homes, businesses, and farmland, causing widespread displacement, infrastructure damage, and agricultural losses. The disaster significantly impacted local economies, communities, and led to the region's long-term recovery. In this special limited series of Kintsugi Heroes, John Milham sits down with members of the Riverlands community and gives them space to share their experiences of their personal adversity diversity and community resilience. It's only through connection and empathy that there can be a path to recovery. Today we welcome Tony Sivore, the General Manager of the Renmark Paringa Council. Tony shares his impactful journey managing the 2022 floods in Renmark, South Australia. Renmark, being the first town impacted by these floods, faced unique challenges due to its island-like geography and extensive levee bank system. Tony, a longtime Riverlander, led a remarkable effort to safeguard the community. From overseeing rapid levee reinforcements to coordinating emergency responses, Tony and his team worked tirelessly to minimize the flood's impact. Join us as we delve into the lessons learned and the resilience shown during this extraordinary event. So, ladies and gentlemen, uh, listeners to Kuntugi Heroes, uh, welcome again to another, uh, session of the floods in the Riverland in South Australia. And normally we're talking about people who are residents and people who are in the area and have a particular challenge from being there. Today we're very privileged to have a discussion with a man who is responsible for the area in some certainly part of it. And, and, uh, today we're talking about with the, the general manager of the, uh, uh, Randmark, um, Paringa, uh, Council. Is that— I got that right? And, um, um, and, uh, Tony, uh, Seville. I hope I said that right too.
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 02:45
Tony Sivier.
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Centralising communications and delivering facts twice a week to the community through local ABC radio built trust in a way that sensational media reports about unspecified holes and unmarked structures could never damage.
This conversation includes born in barmara, came back to lead, the 38-kilometre problem, the silent meeting that changed everything, managing the story while managing the flood, 150,000 tonnes of clay in six weeks and the stormwater trap.
John Milham (Host) · 02:47
Sivier, thank you, mate. And, uh, yeah, so really, uh, in many ways, given the The floods that we're talking about in 2022 that were so impactful right along the whole— from the Murray course, from Renmark through to Murray Bridge, your area in particular, it was a long, slow, and even to this day, huge impact on the people and place that you look after. So, mate, have you, you know, do you still have nightmares about it?
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 03:33
Well, look, you're right, John, it was a pretty stressful time. And I suppose just to set the scene for your listeners, Renmark is the first township that is impacted in South Australia. So in terms of prep work, we had 2 weeks less than other communities. And the other challenging thing is that the township of Renmark is actually an island. You can access the township of Renmark from 4 bridges, well, it's actually 3 at the moment, but we are surrounded by a 38-kilometre levee bank system. So that levee bank system is across 350 private landowners. So that in itself was challenging. So, you know, in terms of having to do work on our levy system, we first had to work out how we could get the consent of 350 people.
John Milham (Host) · 04:29
My goodness, mate. Local council, that sounds like a Herculean effort. Put it back to 2022. First of all, you live in the area, obviously, and you know, Are you a long-term resident of Riverland? I know you've been out and about with your local government journey from here to there. Did you start in the Riverland? Is that where you grew up?
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 04:53
I did. I was born in Barmara, which is just down the road. Grew up in Barmara, but to get a CEO position in local government, I moved out of the region, went over to the West Coast and spent 6 years over there. But always had my eye Renmark as a community that I was really interested to come back and work at. So yeah, I'm a Riverlander and I've been out and come back.
John Milham (Host) · 05:19
How long you been back?
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 05:21
I've been back 13 years actually. And I think in that time we have done some work. We've attempted to get our levee network remediated right back until 2010. But we haven't been able to secure funding. But the funding obviously did flow during 2022.
John Milham (Host) · 05:44
Yeah, there's nothing like a big wet reminder of how necessary things are sometimes.
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 05:52
Yeah, that's exactly right. And, you know, credit to the government of the day, their support for local government emergency services was fantastic, and we knew very early on that we were going to have to play a big role in this response. I think early, early October, I was actually in Mooloolaba with my family, having a good time, good part of the world, but also monitoring the river flows. And, you know, once I got back, it was very clear that we had something rather large on our hands, and we initiated our emergency incident management team straight away. And I do remember a conversation or a meeting with the SES CEO and the now CEO of Department of Environment and Water in early October where they came down to Redmark and we sat in my office for what felt like an hour, but it was probably 30 seconds where we actually didn't say anything other than looked at each other and I knew that, yeah, we certainly had a situation on our hands.
John Milham (Host) · 07:02
I find, sorry, I just kind of smiled earlier because holidaying in Mooloolaba, you might, some of the water that hit you there might have ended up at your feet in Redmarket several months later.
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 07:15
Possibly, yeah, yeah. And you know, that's what we found in early October once we'd initiated our emergency incident management team is that every week we were seeing massive amounts of rainfall falling in the Murray-Darling Basin. And river flow projections were increasing and, you know, where it started off as potentially being a low flood or a high river event, it certainly very quickly became a, you know, a significant flood event that meant that we had to do a lot of work in a very short space of time.
John Milham (Host) · 07:52
Now, it's interesting because this, the profile of this flood is, you know, fairly unusual that, so the folks tell me, in that, you know, it was predicted as coming and then it was like a slow event that suddenly surprised everybody, right? And I find that really interesting that they sort of still managed to find surprise in something that sort of trickled up and slowly sort of came down the river.
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 08:18
Yeah, look, I think we're blessed in the fact that we have 6 weeks to prepare, uh, roughly And I'm not sure it was a surprise to the community. Maybe it was a surprise in the end of how big the event was. Because it just kept increasing with every rainfall event. And when waters from different rivers, you know, meet up and then projections change, that's probably what, you know, the community may have found challenging. I think they definitely did from some of the feedback that we got. Early on, John, some of the most difficult things that we faced was managing the media. Not the local media, the local media were fantastic and they worked with us in ensuring the community had really good information about the flood, but there was some sensational media happening that we found difficult to manage. We had to centralise our communications. We also had our mayor had only just been elected, and so he essentially walked straight into the second biggest flood in 152 years. So very, very challenging for him. He was fantastic, took it all in stride. I think he did something in excess of 50 interviews over a couple of months. But, you know, hugely challenging situation for him.
John Milham (Host) · 09:43
Yeah. So it's interesting from that perspective, and I think, well, you know, it'd be good to explore that a bit. Further in a minute. But it's interesting because you mentioned this was second only to the 1956 flood in terms of impact and reach. The Renmark area, the entire Riverland area, is full of water people, right? It's rural Australia, but the river runs through them, doesn't it? In many ways, irrigated agriculture, tourism, the life on the river itself with the boating side of things, that's such an important part of the culture, the lifestyle, and the mindset of the people. How do you think when the river comes up and sort of bites them almost, is there an understanding that that's part of their choices are part of what they're living, or is there surprise and pain about it? You know, how does that go over?
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 10:48
It's a really good question, John. I think it's probably a bit of both. Obviously, it is the lifeline of our community, but we did have some very challenging situations where power was turned off to, you know, large vineyards with very short notice. So that was extremely challenging. Some of the work that we did where we did have a spare minute was actually to go and speak to the people who were there in 1956.
John Milham (Host) · 11:15
Yeah.
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 11:16
And when I say there in 1956, like, they were working on banks. They were old enough that they were involved in that. I actually had a few just drive around to my house and come and talk to me about it, which was fantastic because I love that. Yeah, they were probably the people that had their head around it the most. And, you know, a lot of them said to me, Tony, you you know, you're doing a great job, you have this under control, your levee banks are looking magnificent. I think we carted in excess of 150,000 tonnes of clay in about 6 weeks. So, you know, our levee banks were rock solid. We had a fantastic monitoring system in place as well, because we knew that if we got it wrong in one spot, we potentially, from some of the modelling we'd seen, we could have lost up to 600 houses. But look, I mean, people like living near water. That's across Australia, you'll see that people like living near water. And that's the spots where they want to be.
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 13:24
Yeah, look, it was really, really difficult, to be honest, because one thing led to another. On the, I think it was the 23rd of October, we had our single biggest rainfall event in the history of Renmark. Wow. Right when we were attempting to work with clay on levee banks. So you couldn't have scripted that any worse, John, to be honest. But once we hit our mojo with the levee banks, then the next issue that we were faced with was with our stormwater. So we had 29 stormwater outlets that we had to essentially seal up so that the water wouldn't get in via them. And that was challenging. And also we then had to deploy large irrigate— large pumping systems, you know, in the event that we had a rainfall event because we would have flooded from within.
John Milham (Host) · 14:24
Yeah, yeah.
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 14:25
So there's all these challenges that you face. You know, getting close to the peak, which was on Boxing Day, the pressure on the bunds that were in the stormwater systems were immense and some of them just couldn't handle it. So, you know, examples, we had to just go and pour concrete in the end of the stormwater pipes because it's the only way we could get them to seal. Those sort of challenges you don't appreciate until you're in the moment.
John Milham (Host) · 14:55
Yeah, this was such a— sounds like such an active management process. What did you learn about your team?
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 15:07
Uh, what I learned was there were some people handled their situation really well, some people didn't. Some people really stood up, um, when it was needed. Um, and that's— you just don't know until you're in that situation. But we set some self— our rule— some, some rules very early on because we met every day from the 13th of October to the 13th of January. We met every day because things were changing so quickly. We only met for an hour every day because we couldn't sit there and procrastinate and, you know, go through every single issue that we had every day. It'd be, what's the biggest issue we're dealing with today? And we're just in there, we're cracking in and making decisions. And getting on with it. So that worked, definitely worked for us as an emergency incident management team. I think probably my, one of my biggest learnings was to step away during the event. So because it was so intense, you know, a few of us struggled, including myself. Yeah. And I should have stepped away, but I didn't. I didn't want to step away. Like, I wanted to be there every day. Yeah, that's definitely a learning for me, is that in the middle of an event you need downtime. Because the event was 12 weeks and it was non-stop, you didn't get a day off from it. So yeah, that was definitely a big learning.
John Milham (Host) · 16:40
In some ways, you know, like, you know, as we're seeing in floods at the moment and, you know, across the country, we know that this can be a life and death event, and of course people's livelihoods and people's home and memories are impacted. How does that sit with you, like you were making decisions that were directly impacting people's sense of well-being and even more than that, their future?
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 17:07
Yeah, it was huge, John, and I took it very seriously. I suppose it was an honour to be given the opportunity, and I think that's how some of my emergency team felt it was, it was an honor to, to, you know, be placed in that situation. But yeah, certainly was happy when the peak had gone and it was starting to go down. But yeah, obviously we were left with a pretty large cleanup as well.
John Milham (Host) · 17:33
Yeah, massive. Was it too much? Like, we— like, there's certain jobs that people shouldn't be doing by themselves, right? You know, like, or, you know, you shouldn't be left without support. Was there— were you— was there— there was so much asked of you and your colleagues, was that fair?
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 17:53
No, I don't think so. Like, I— we had good support as well. I think, you know, in the situations where, you know, people needed to clock off, if we'd done that regularly, I think we, you know, we certainly had it under control. We were probably a little bit different in that most things we wanted to handle ourselves and then reach out for help. Yeah, look, some, some of the challenging stuff was having to work out the, the solution because we were the first council in South Australia. We did go over to Mildura and see what was happening over there, but we, we were sort of trailblazing some of the stuff and then passing it down the line. So some of that was a bit challenging, like the stormwater in particular was challenging, but we made sure that in particular Mannum was aware of that because we knew that they would face that same issue that we had.
John Milham (Host) · 18:57
Yeah, how was your personal impact? Did you feel safe behind the levees?
John Milham (Host) · 25:42
Defence Cell, just tell the folks at home what that looks like.
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 25:47
Yeah, so it's an Army-style product. It's sort of a caged square with mesh in it. And then, yeah, essentially you just, put red dirt in it and just compound it really, really hard, and it just creates a really strong barrier.
John Milham (Host) · 26:07
Fantastic. Some innovation as well. And of course, the project you led, right? Yeah, that you had to innovate and, you know, and then set up, you know, basically, as you mentioned, blaze a trail for other communities. Was that like the sense of passing that on? Did they learn from that? Was that a, you know, a successful process?
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 26:32
Look, I think so. For some communities it was relevant, for others probably not so much. And the main community that, well, I would hope assisted was Mannum. So the CEO of Mid Murray Council, Ben Scales, and myself spent a lot of time on the phone just talking through, you know, what are you seeing, you know, what should I be doing to prepare, how are you getting on, all this sort of stuff. Because they're a good 4, you know, 4 or 5 weeks behind us. So, um, yeah, look, I, I hope it was of some assistance.
John Milham (Host) · 27:08
Is this a, like, um, is this, was this a work or was this more than work?
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 27:16
Uh, no, this is, now this has worked, John. Yeah, that's definitely work, but, but very, very satisfying.
John Milham (Host) · 27:24
Um, Yeah, and, um, uh, what would you like, uh, the community to know going forward, right? Yeah, so now we've got, um, you've been through this exercise, so you've got the, this, the organization strands, you know, your, your particular team and council, you've got your community. What would you like both those different sections to know going for them?
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 27:54
Look, I think for the community, we'd like them to know that we've learned a lot. We, we have a lot of good learnings and systems in place. We are still working with the government on understanding how we can have a levy system that's easier to manage in that There's 350 landowners in our community, and that is not easy. I mean, I must admit that the community of the people who own that land were great. We essentially wrote to them and said, look, we're going to do whatever we want to save the community and your property. Obviously, we had powers. We used Section 298 of the Local Government Act, but We don't want to have to do that in future. Like, it should be a better way of doing it. So that is still a work in progress.
John Milham (Host) · 28:55
Yeah, so going forward, you'll be, you know, is that, you know, a collective, a group meeting, right? Regular sort of updates? Is that how you think it might roll out?
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 29:04
So at the moment, it sits with Department of Environment and Water, but we are a party to those conversations. Yeah, and then like from our community's perspective, that's some of the things that we would like to see. How can this be easier to manage in the future? And who pays for it? Who pays for the maintenance of our levee network when there's not a flood event?
John Milham (Host) · 29:29
Yeah, good question. No, it's interesting, you know, living there is a— it's almost a cost of living there, isn't it?
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 29:38
Well, we don't think it should be. So, you know, it's— there's a levee network across the whole of the river system, and that's, yeah, that's essentially the answers that we want to get.
John Milham (Host) · 29:53
The plan going forward, how will you keep the plan active, spontaneous, fresh?
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 30:02
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 38:00
Me personally?
John Milham (Host) · 38:01
Yeah, are you ready for the next one? Are you gonna wait and smash the next drought?
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 38:08
The next drought or the next flood?
John Milham (Host) · 38:09
Next drought, next flood.
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 38:12
Look, I do feel we're far better prepared for a future flood event. The bridge that we're constructing at the moment, the bridge before it was actually a bit of an impediment to flow and we've removed that. Our wharf is designed for 100 years, so we'll be far, far better prepared for the next flood event. Drought is another thing. Drought's far more difficult to prepare for.
John Milham (Host) · 38:45
Yeah, and I'm just thinking lastly, right, 2 years on, and this is a key time because, you know, there are still people that certainly, you know, downstream as well who are still, you know, cleaning up from them from and dealing with stuff. How's that going in your community? Are people back to where they want to be yet?
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 39:12
Look, I think we're getting close, John. Yeah, other than our bridge on 21st Street, The majority of our infrastructure is back up and running. If you came down, you probably wouldn't notice that we'd been in a flood event. So give us another, where are we, probably 4 months and we're sort of back to business as usual. Probably not so for my fellow friends down at Manum who Yeah, I really feel for that. They, you know, suffered a lot more, um, damage than we did. Um, and yeah, like, hopefully they can get that all under control as soon as possible.
John Milham (Host) · 39:59
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 40:27
I hope so, John. Like, we're dealing with more than just the aftermath of a flood, unfortunately. You know, we have our issues with our wine grape sector and You know, our pest-free area status that we're trying very desperately to hold on to coming into a dry period. So, you know, there's a lot happening in the community and, you know, obviously the mental health of everyone is very important to Council.
John Milham (Host) · 40:55
Do you think Council has a role in a community mental health world?
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 40:58
Yeah, we do, we certainly do, and we've run some mental health programs and some mental health first aid programs as well. And we pride ourselves on some of the community events that we support and run ourselves that, you know, hopefully give people the opportunity to forget about what they're dealing with on a day-to-day basis. Yeah.
John Milham (Host) · 41:22
And it sounds, yeah, it sounds like you guys are really steeling yourself for the job ahead to get, you know, to keep that community vibrant and functioning. And I take my hat off to the work you've done already to get through what is an incredible event, and on the heels of quite a number of challenges, you know, COVID and droughts. And so congratulations, mate, on looking after your town and your people, and good work on keeping the river waters tamed a little bit, at least.
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 41:55
Thanks, John. I appreciate it. It's not me, it's a team event. Everyone was involved. There was a huge team behind me. So I certainly don't take the credit for it. And like I said, my mayor was amazing as well. First couple of weeks into the job and he's been interviewed by Sky News about a very difficult situation. So yeah, it was certainly a team effort.
John Milham (Host) · 42:21
Yeah, congratulations to you and the team, mate, and all the best. Thank you so much for talking to Kintsugi Heroes, the Beyond the Deluge, the Riverland floods, and mate, so much insight in all of that. And I wish you well, right, with all the, you know, typical Australian challenges you have ahead of you. Cheers, mate.
You don't have to be in crisis to call.
John Milham (Host) · 12:25
Of course, the riverboats are iconic. They're part of Australian folklore almost, right?
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 12:31
Yeah, definitely. We have a very strong houseboat industry in Rennmark as well, which was another issue that we had to deal with. Like our moorings were not adequate. We quickly realised we had a local commercial operator who said, look, this is what I'm going to do with my boats, I'm willing to coordinate it for Council. Because yeah, we could have lost 150 houseboats as well if we didn't get that right.
John Milham (Host) · 12:58
Yeah, sounds very complicated. Would you guys, like, you are a river council, would you, you know, with levies and so on, they're uniquely kind of challenging in terms of management and so on. And of course, when they go wrong, people point the finger directly. How do you feel about that challenge? Is that something you knew was going to be a part because you're a local yourself?
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 19:05
Look, My house is actually out in the horticultural area. So, like, but that didn't make any difference to my decision-making. So yeah, look, I mean, for me to go to lunch during the flood event sometimes take up to an hour and a half because a lot of people would bail me up and say, look, I live on this street, you know, you need to do something. The great thing for us was we had excellent data. So we had a digital elevation model that could show us which levees we needed to work on first, but that's difficult to explain to the community. They, you know, they need— I need you down there working on my levee. But that was challenging. Yeah, that was certainly challenging.
John Milham (Host) · 19:52
So your place, because you've got a vineyard, is that where you— yeah.
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 19:57
Yeah, I wouldn't call it a vineyard, John, anymore. Like I liked growing the grapes to make wine, but I wasn't making any money, John. So it's actually gone now.
John Milham (Host) · 20:10
Oh, wow.
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 20:10
Wow. Yeah.
John Milham (Host) · 20:11
So you have a story of the wine industry where the little bloke is struggling, right? So yeah, we'll have to do that in the next project, right?
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 20:21
Maybe.
John Milham (Host) · 20:22
So yeah, so you're— it was interesting because some of the decisions about looking after some people are on the other side of levees and things. That's it. So you, you at least, you know, weren't, you know, weren't accused of not being in the middle of it, right, yourself?
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 20:40
No, no. And I mean, now there was not one house impacted behind our formal levee network, which is something we're obviously pretty proud of.
John Milham (Host) · 20:50
Yeah, fair. Clean-up is like, there's a special hell that flood leaves you, you know. Um, how'd you guys face that, right? It's like after all of that war— were heroic efforts to keep the water at bay, but you know, there's still that— the damage and cleanup to do, which just seems to be overwhelming. How do you guys manage, you know, to, to get that— to bring things back online and to keep people served and happy?
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 21:25
Look, again, challenging. Communication was the key, letting the communication, letting the community know what would come back on first and things like that. We still haven't finished all of our recovery efforts. We still have a major bridge that we're building right now, so Look, yeah, it's just thanking the community, I suppose, for being patient because these works are substantial. What, you know, the work that we did on our Town Wharf was in excess of $10 million. The bridge we're building at the moment is around $8 million as well. So these are serious pieces of infrastructure that, you know, it's really disappointing that they were impacted so much, but it's an opportunity for us to rebuild them and build them better, which the government's been good in supporting us so that next time we do have a flood event, and we will have another flood, this infrastructure is a lot more rigid and is ready, essentially ready for this type of event.
John Milham (Host) · 22:37
You came back to the Riverland, so you chose to be in the middle of this stuff. One thing you know, it's going to flood. What do you love about this place?
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 22:49
Oh, there's heaps of things, John. Like, I mean, you know, as much as the river has just taught us a really big lesson, it's a great place to be. You know, spent the weekend on the river even though it was 43 here yesterday. You know, we had one of our marquee events, the Rillan Dinghy Derby, was on on the weekend. So drags in thousands of people from all over Australia, and it's a fantastic event. So, you know, the river lifestyle, you know, you can't beat it really. It's probably the thing I like the most. Growing grapes, not so much, but not anymore.
John Milham (Host) · 23:28
Well, you once liked it, but now you've learned, right?
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 23:31
Yeah.
John Milham (Host) · 23:36
What do you love about, you know, like what did you learn and love maybe, or maybe not, about your community?
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 23:46
I suppose the first thing I probably learned was that people were not ready for a flood of this magnitude. Yeah, they were probably scared than I expected, other than the people that I spoke to from 1956 who were very comfortable with what was happening. I think the community were absolutely fantastic once they realised that we had the wheels in motion and were confident that we were going to, you know, get this stuff in order for when the peak came. So as with anything, you know, it takes a while for things to start moving, but once they saw the trucks moving and there was up to 200 truck movements a day, they could see that the levees are getting rebuilt, looking absolutely magnificent. Probably the turning point, I think, of the flood event was when we deployed the Defence Cell product on the Remarque riverfront, because I had a lot of people come to me and say, yeah, that's great, you're doing all these levees, but you're doing nothing on the riverfront and it's going to overtop. The data that we had was that it was touch and go whether it would, but we said to government we need something there in case projections are out or there's more rain or something like that. So as it was, that defence cell barely got touched, but it was a fantastic opportunity for us to involve Costa Group and their Pacific Islander program. So they actually came in and did all the installation work for the defence cell. It just was, I think, was a turning point where the community could see that we essentially had the infrastructure in place.
Yeah, look, like I said, we're not driving it, but But there's certainly, you know, collectively interest between the three Riverland councils. So we work together as a G3. So we will keep the pressure on to make sure that there are outcomes from that, from the money that's been allocated.
John Milham (Host) · 30:26
And what do you, you know, like when you see reports, just recently, you know, of floods and so on. Does that cause you a little shiver?
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 30:39
I wouldn't say, I wouldn't say a shiver, John, you know, probably, probably a point of reflection, definitely. There's always, there's always going to be floods and, you know, that's why we are keen to get these, these answers on whose responsibility is it in the future, so. Yeah, not a shiver, mate. No, no.
John Milham (Host) · 31:01
So you're, uh, you're painting a picture of the impervious, in-control council executive, mate, with every— with all the, uh, answers, um, which I love, right? Which is like full of confidence and, uh, and care.
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 31:15
I'm not, I'm not saying we got all the answers, John, but, you know, look, I, I think, you know, hopefully through that flood event, um, we've proven to the community that we can step up and, you know, protect the community from an event like that.
John Milham (Host) · 31:29
And it was clear the council, a lot fell to the council, that was it. So are you proud of what you did?
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 31:36
Yeah, yep, look, I think our electorate membership and, you know, we won a couple of awards for some of the work that we did. So like, I think some of the staff are definitely proud of what they achieved.
John Milham (Host) · 31:50
Which brings us back to what you mentioned earlier, right? Like, where on earth did that sort of, you know, uh, sort of adverse reporting come from? What was the— what was the grounds?
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 32:03
Oh, look, it was just— look, it was very early on, John, to be honest, and it was just, you know, we were hit with some questions like, um, you know, you've got legal structures on, on your levy banks. We'd say like, like, where? So we can respond. And they're like, oh yeah, okay, if you're not going to respond, we'll just run the story. Just things like that. Oh, there's a hole in this levee bank, water's coming through. We're like, okay, where would that be? That's all right, we'll just run the story. Yeah, that was not helpful. Um, but what was helpful was going to, um, our local ABC who, um, ran twice a week, I think it was, or 3 times a week. I was on every morning for, you know, 2, I think it was 2 days a week with a regular update. That was helpful, really helpful. And a lot, you know, people in the community came to me and said, I listen to hear what you've got to say. The other stuff was, yeah, like it was in the Advertiser and, you know, it's got an overlay of area flood and red markers, you know, happened to be our waterfront commercial. Waterfront housing area, which is— which has always got water in it. Yeah. So I don't know, that's how you sell papers, isn't it?
John Milham (Host) · 33:16
Yeah, I guess so. I have no, no idea, right? So, but, um, what I do— what I am interested in is how that impacts— it's like, you know, like the community came together, right, in a tough time, right? Was it— and to me, that's the story. Is that how you saw it?
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 33:37
Absolutely, yeah. And that was, like I said there, early on we had to centralise our communications. That was paramount. We had to get in front of any negativity and just talk facts, and that's essentially what we did. We had a team that formed up the messages and the messages were delivered by either myself or the Mayor. And people would say, "Oh, thank you. Yep, like we can understand where we're at or what we're talking about." As we're starting to talk about stormwater, then we'd say, "This is what we're looking to do with stormwater." Do you think a community grows from these kinds of things? I do. I certainly do. Like some of the people that were carting all of the material in, just loved it, absolutely loved it. Everyone's waving to the people carting the material in. Probably the— we knew early on that the community were, really wanted to get behind this effort. Obviously, their major town is on the line, but we're blessed with a lot of very skilled earth-moving contractors in Renmark. We've probably got more earthmoving contractors than most of the communities around us. So early on, my director, Tarek Wolf, brought all the earthmoving contractors into one room and they essentially started working through the solution on how to coordinate this effort. We didn't tender this work. We didn't have time to tender this work. So this is probably in excess of $5 million worth of earth moving, which was done by essentially all the contractors giving us their rates, their availability, and then we sent letters of offer. And we did all that within 5 days. Yeah, you know, $5 million worth of work for us to, you know, tender that through our normal procurement processes It would have taken us 3 to 4 months. So it probably says something about using Section 298, to be honest. Like, it's—
John Milham (Host) · 35:56
yeah, yeah, yeah, it might sound attractive to some people right now. So yeah, getting stuff, uh, you know, getting those big projects through quickly. Um, so you talk, uh, quite a bit about, um, you know the challenges going forward organisationally, right? What do you think the community has to do to be prepared for the future, right? To be healthy into the future? How do we, you know, how do you go on with life and have priorities and then understand that there'll be another flood at some point?
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 36:32
Look, I suppose it's probably keeping yourself informed, John. It's giving Council feedback on whether we think we have it under control, or us providing information about what this next body of work with the government is going to look like. So I think it's with anything, it's about being informed, having all the information at your fingertips.
John Milham (Host) · 36:58
Because water is a big issue coming forward, and this is part of it, water management and so on, irrigated agriculture, and the tourism on the river, how do you bring all that together and still be aware that, you know, you have to be able to respond to future challenges and floods and stuff?
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 37:20
It's a difficult one, John, yeah. Like you point out, you know, we're probably about to go into a drought now. So, you know, we've come out, second biggest flood in 152 years, and then we go into a drought. You know, you're living in a challenging community. As much as it's beautiful, yeah, it's, it's, you know, the ups and downs are very high.
John Milham (Host) · 37:42
Yeah, it's interesting, uh, all the Riverland people I talk to, they, they love their Riverland, right? So despite how, uh, how hard it makes them work sometimes.
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 37:52
Yeah, doesn't surprise me.
John Milham (Host) · 37:55
Um, yeah, so going forward, what's your future?
And, um, it's not just the physical scars or, you know, impacts, it's the, you know, it's the psychological ones. You know, people go through a lot of effort. There's even if there's the work done to mitigate the issue and then the relief afterwards. How do you think that cleanup is going? Is the community, you know, feeling safer, feeling back to normal?
Tony Siviour (Guest) · 42:39
No worries, John. Yeah, thank you very much. Thanks for the opportunity, appreciate it.
John Milham (Host) · 42:43
Thank you for listening to this episode of Riverland Recovery Stories. If anything in this conversation has had a triggering effect, please seek support and reach out to someone who can help keep you safe. If you found this conversation interesting or helpful, please share it with your friends, family, and colleagues so we can help more people with their recovery from natural disasters. To find out more about Kintsugi Heroes and our other projects, head to kintsugiheroes.com.au. Thank you to our production team, Kintsugi Heroes volunteers, and most importantly, the Riverland community for sharing their lived experience.
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