Letter to the Editor: Dear Donald, Love Rose

Dear Donald,
Love Rose
(The Editor, “The Times”)

Hello Donald, It’s your old friend Rose Harris here.

I hope you’re doing well.

It has been a while since I have written for these beloved columns of the “Buloke Times”. I should have written earlier, I thought of doing it often. The truth is, I sort of lost the love of writing after I left Donald, maybe I’ve forgotten how to do it altogether. Let’s see...

I’ve been reflecting on why Donald was the place I found the most inspiration for writing. I have an indescribable feeling of warmth as I entertain the possibility of these words showing up on that beautiful crisp paper under the watchful eyes of the “Buloke Times” team. The length of this piece, measured by columns, run under that legendary string wrapped around a well loved palm-sized piece of wood. These words, printed with a hiss and a stomp from the Heidelburg press behind a front page that beams community.

I borrowed that line from Paul Kelly, “I hope you’re doing well”, from his famous letter written to music. I know you are having a rough time at the moment, Donald. This is perhaps what brings me to write to you after all these years. Maybe there is a reason why the right time is now to write to you once again.

I write to you from up here in Queensland, the weather is as Queensland winter as it gets, a few cold mornings and then beaming sunshine by mid-morning. I had a Kookaburra visit my backyard this morning and perch itself on my fence. I imagine this was no mistake – I live in the middle of suburbia and a place Kookaburras don’t often visit.

It was surely a prompt that I need to tell you some things, Donald. These are all things you already know, but it can’t hurt to be reminded of.

Donald, you taught me everything I know about community. I can’t begin to explain how I have taken that and spread it across the entire country, to rural communities in Queensland, Western Australia, New South Wales and South Australia and sprinkled a fair bit in between.

There is no doubt about it, when I was a relative newcomer to town, two little kids (who are now 20 and 18!), fresh out of the city, it is fair to say that I was at a bit of loose end, I was doubting my skills and confidence and I wasn’t sure how to take the first tentative steps into this town. Well, Donald, you did it all for me.

You came to my door and invited our family to be a part of your community. I mean that quite literally – our little street threw a welcome party when we first moved in and the formidable Robin Letts made a personal visit to my door one day asking if I’d like to write for these columns.

As the years crept forward, I lost count of the opportunities that came my way in Donald. To step up and be trusted to raise my voice on behalf of the wonderful town that, I often felt, were carrying me on their shoulders. You know that old saying? I can only see so far for I have stood on the shoulders of giants – that’s you and me Donald.

Of course, the highlight would be when I would eventually take up that invitation from Mr Letts in the chaos of the 2011 floods and eventually write for these pages.

I got to see every side of the Donald community and I was gifted with listening to your stories and writing them back for you. I even went on to work for your local council to see how it all happened on the other side and gained an even deeper appreciation for the accountability and empathetic leadership required by elected officials and staff when you are the one constant for a community of strong, individual communities.

My children have such fond memories of growing up in Donald. They are forever grateful for the beautiful childhood they had, and that’s because of you, Donald. Because of the village you are. You truly are the epitome of “it takes a village to raise a child”, so I can only imagine how deeply you hurt at the moment.

I won’t pretend to know you so well any longer, it has been a while. But I reckon many of these things would still ring true.

Donald, when we discovered we needed better for our little people all those years ago, you pitched in and we got that early years centre. That and so many other community assets were built on the back of “that’s how we do it around here”.

I remember someone telling me the story as we were advocating for our youngest residents, insisting they should not be disadvantaged by postcode, that the only reason we – I mean you – had an ambulance station to begin with was because you decided to fundraise and build the thing yourselves.

There would be countless times this type of story could be repeated.
You see, Donald, you have the recipe for a beautiful community, you ARE a beautiful community and I know you don’t need me to tell you that, so thanks for indulging me anyway as I see these words rack up more column space than will be allowable.

I work across the country in my job now – which is just a variation of what you taught me – finding the strength in regional, rural and remote communities and then supporting that to flourish, in my case to grow local aged care workforces. Not coming in with the answer, not pretending like a new government program is going to fix everything, but strengthening the answers, the ideas and the local solutions which are inevitably already there.

It’s not until I write this that I realise I introduce myself to these communities, not as Rose who lives at the Gold Coast, but as Rose from the Wimmera, a small-town girl who knows what it means when someone sees the true gold of a community.

These days with so many meetings on video, my “background” has always been and will forever be an irreplaceable Gooroc sunset, whether I am talking to the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing in Canberra or the Aged Care providers of Mount Isa.

I realise how much I took for granted, how a community like Donald just gets in and does what is needed, and it is something that often leaves metro people speechless.

I know what it means when someone like me comes in to some one else’s small town and talks the big talk or shines a spotlight on your town, sometimes for wonderful reasons and sometimes for tragic ones. These people are there to help and support and come with the best of intentions to add their skills to support the reason they have come to a place they perhaps hadn’t heard of before.

Then news crews leave and the headlines change, and you are still there. You are the ones that hold each other, help each other find your own ways of healing through yet another challenging time. I won’t pretend to understand; I won’t pretend to compare what you are going through now with anything else I’ve seen you tackle. But as an outsider looking in, Donald. As an observer. As someone who carried your lessons in my heart, I guess I just wanted to write and say stay strong and I’m thinking of you. I see that in what you are already doing Donald and the empathy you exude is sending ripples through the entire country.

The Bullock’s Head has stood as a symbol of Donald’s resilience and strength and now it is also a place to honour Layla, a place for her friends and family and her community to visit and feel connected, to grieve together and wrap around each other as tributes are placed. While everyone wishes this was not the case, and maybe it will be a bad dream you will all wake up from, the solid foundations of the Donald community will always be a soft, strong and patient place to hold the broken pieces gently. This must be so hard, the hardest of hard things, words are fickle and disbelief sometimes make us forget who we are. I know it is such a small thing Donald, but I hope these few words and reminders land where they need to be.

If Paul Kelly knew the recipe for gravy, then Donald has the recipe book for community.

Sending all my love,
Rose.
Pimpama, Queensland.