I was so pleased a recent Sunday Gospel was the Good Samaritan. It gives me a chance to share my good neighbour story.
A couple of weeks ago, I came home from work at about four in the afternoon and went with my sister to bring the bins in from the verge.
We noticed that the NBN point on our external wall was gushing what looked like dirty water. “How strange,” we thought.
Then we found that the NBN node on the verge was absolutely pouring out dirty water into our neighbour’s front yard.
And it stunk. Because it was in fact wastewater from the sewage system.
Before you faint, there were no solids – just kilolitres of foul water, pouring out at an astonishing rate.
We were too late to save our neighbour’s garage, which had flooded with the stuff. But it was now lapping at her front door.
So we sprang into action and improvised with a half-bag of potting mix and some old brick pavers as a barrier.
We swept as much of the gushing flood as we could on to our shared front lawn. But it wasn’t enough, so we then built a levee and redirected it down our shared driveway.
Soon, both of our stormwater drains were filled with wastewater, and it was now lapping at our garage.
So we dammed our driveway with sods of turf cut out of the lawn, brick pavers, and whatever else we could find.
This meant that we had to send the flood across the next-door neighbour’s front garden and down to her stormwater drain.
Thankfully she’s not much of a landscaper and was willing (sort of).
Once that stormwater drain filled, the rear neighbour’s daughter built a levee out of turf and old bricks to stop her mother’s unit from flooding.
By now, we had a group of about six neighbours all working with buckets, shovels, brick pavers, and a couple of long pieces of melamine to build dams and redirect the flow.
We’d run out of driveways, so there was only one place left to go. We cut trenches across our neighbour’s front lawn and directed the flood into the street.
This sent most of the flow into the street drains, with a rather precarious dam across our neighbour’s drive to stop it from flooding her garage a second time.
I’m including a photo of this dam, because we were quite proud of it. The big piece of melamine on the right did yeoman service.
The water authority had arrived about an hour after we called them, took one look at what they’d clearly thought was a minor job, and left to get reinforcements.
All in all, we were hard at work till around 9pm that night. That’s when they came back with sucker-trucks and spent most of the night trying to locate the leak and stop the flood.
They found it the next morning, two doors up, and we had no electricity for a day and a night while it got fixed.
So it’s been a bit like living on a bomb site, and we both had to throw our shoes away afterwards, but it’s been worth it.
We’re getting completely new pipes. The water authority also cleaned and sanitised everyone’s drive and our sewage-flooded rear courtyard.
But the best discovery was what very good neighbours we had. We didn’t know most of the people who were helping us.
Given that we were all ankle-deep in sewage, we didn’t spend much time on the social niceties of introducing ourselves.
But I can tell you that it was next door’s daughter, a guy from across the street, a guy from two doors down, and some other guy, and the people who lived in our group of units.
We saw the last guy the next day – he brought his kid over to see the earthworks and wreckage – and thanked him personally.
And I also wrote thank you notes and dropped them off at the houses of the people who had helped us.
Everyone worked together. No one was bossy or lazy. It was too much of an emergency for that.
No one made a big deal out of it or expected a medal. Everyone did what was necessary.
And because of that, we saved every house from being flooded with wastewater.
Emergencies bring out the worst and the best in people. We were so blessed to see the best.
There are still plenty of people out there who know who their neighbour is, and I’m really grateful for it.
