Residents seeking shelter in Cooktown following flooding
The ABC’s Joe O’Brien is at Cooktown he's been speaking with people recently evacuated from the town of Wujal Wujal.
Transcript
00:00 So we're at the Cooktown, what is usually PCYC here, but right now it's home to around
00:07 200 people from the Indigenous community of Wujal Wujal.
00:11 We spoke a little earlier to the Wujal Wujal Mayor, Bradley Creek, who actually had to
00:16 leave the community last week just before the cyclone hit because his wife was just
00:21 about to give birth.
00:22 And this is the first time he's actually been able to see his community since all this drama
00:27 has unfolded.
00:28 So he spoke to us a little bit about the impending birth, but also the drama he's been through
00:33 and coming here to see community members again.
00:35 It feels really great mate, to touch down in Cooktown and to see my family members from
00:41 Wujal today.
00:43 So most of the community members are here now, some are staying with family members
00:49 in the Cooktown community.
00:50 And we've spoken to a couple of them about the trauma of the night that they were in
00:55 the floods, not necessarily the cyclone because there wasn't much damage from the cyclone.
00:59 All of it, the vast majority of it came from the floods.
01:02 Spoke to them about that and also having this place as home now, but very keen to get back
01:08 to Wujal Wujal.
01:09 On Sunday it was pretty bad.
01:12 The river came up almost to my house, but I was lucky, one of the lucky ones.
01:20 There were a few that didn't make it there.
01:25 There were about 10 houses that went under, I'm sure.
01:30 It was a bit scary.
01:32 We had no time to get some stuff.
01:35 We just got ourselves in a hurry because the water was rushing into our house.
01:42 Another person we've come across here is Gary Ashworth.
01:45 He's from Dagara, which is where that 85-year-old man went missing from.
01:50 Gary actually knows him quite well.
01:52 Gary's gone through the trauma of that night that the water came up so quickly and they
01:57 all ended up on their roofs for hours waiting for help.
02:00 He was actually in touch with this 85-year-old man through that night.
02:04 I got a call from him about 10 o'clock stating I've got to get out.
02:10 I said it's most probably too late because there's a little bit of a creek before then.
02:13 That would have been 10 or 15 feet deep running.
02:16 We said hopefully someone will get you.
02:21 He said, "No, don't worry about it.
02:22 I'll go up in the second level of my house."
02:24 He went up in the second level.
02:26 Then another neighbour rang him and said, "How's it going?"
02:30 He said, "I'm going."
02:32 Then the house just got swept away, the whole house and him in it.
02:36 So many of these people have been through so much trauma, but the good thing for the
02:41 moment, at least they have somewhere to rest.
02:45 There's a constant stream of food coming in here and more and more people are trickling in.
02:50 in.
02:52 [BLANK_AUDIO]