SANDRA FREEMAN

We had three portaloos just in this immediate area; we had one just down on the corner here, one that’s over the road and one a couple of houses down. Over time though they’ve slowly taken them away and it’s got down to just this one. In the last two months, it’s been knocked over. Once by the wind, so we can’t blame anyone for that, but after my husband pegged it down we’ve had people just kick it over a couple of times and it’s really not that funny. Not after this length of time. You kick that over and you’ve taken people’s toilet away, which leaves the only other option, a bucket in the yard. And that I cannot do in my head. Yeah, that gets everybody angry, well it’s robbing people of one small facet of a normal existence. We don’t need this rubbish right now. And I’ll tell you what, these idiots probably don’t realize they’re taking their life in their hands doing this sort of thing. Probably people had a few drinks, did what people do, you know, in a normal life. But this isn’t normal life is it? I tell you what, I wouldn’t like to be them if they get caught; they could get themselves lynched.

That’s one side of things, then you get the complete opposite. To be honest, I’ve had tears in my eyes… it does, it brings you to tears… amazing the way that everybody came together that September. It doesn’t even matter what they did, they could have walked passed and just said, "Hi, how you going," or "Are you okay?," you know, and that just meant the world, it was amazing, yeah just amazing! The student army and the farmy army and just people coming along the road in their car with water containers, it made you feel the need to do something yourself. Such a disaster, and then ordinary people doing the most incredible things. We had church groups knocking on the door and they’re not saying, "A gift from God," or whatever, they were just saying they wanted to help people. "We’re a group of all denominations and here’s a food parcel, here’s a grocery voucher," the generosity was absolutely overwhelming.  One that moved me in particular was Hagley College. One of their–I think it was a year 12 social studies class–they had done a wee study and incorporated it into their school year; but then they did something positive with it. They’d gone out, they’d fundraised, they got donations and then they delivered them to areas that they felt needed help.  It was not actually so much what was in it, you know, it was the handwritten note, the thoughts, the caring and the kindness, so very moving. Yeah, just amazing!