Sir Joh's revenge

This isn’t the first time it’s happened, not by a long way – remember ’56 or ’67? And then there was ’73 and of course ’74, when the floodwaters sank the city centre, and also ’88, and ’92. That’s why it took so long to get a fire brigade around here, there was so much water around all the time that nothing ever got dry enough to catch alight. After ’74 they deepened the riverbed to stop the floods, but it didn’t work. After ’92 they did it again and said we were finally flood-proof – remember the property prices along the riverside went through the roof cos everyone thought they could tear down damp warehouses and replace them with high-rise villas? It was some sort of madness. And now look. For days they’ve been saying the Wivenhoe Dam would burst and the floodwaters would come rushing down. Some were saying all the nutrients upstream would get washed down with the floodwaters and out into the bay, and we’d get a bumper crop of prawns this year. But the waters in the bay have been far too cold for prawns, and the only thing growing like crazy is the plantlife. Mass wisteria. And now the floodwaters are too strong – did you hear about those three idiots from Ipswich who tried to float on their lilos all the way to South Bank? As soon as they hit the current they were out of control, clinging for their lives to flimsy rubber while huge trees torn out of the riverbank by the force of water swept around them. That’s why I don’t like to swim, I don’t like the current. When people get carried away scary things happen. Anyway, it makes me so furious I see red. I don’t know why they don’t just call out the army like they did in ’74, when they sent the trucks in and set up tent cities. They could get those trucks through the floodwaters. I served in Vietnam, that place is full of water, and people getting bitten by mosquitoes and getting malaria. They could get those trucks through anything. There should just be a law that the army can do that when floods happen and other stuff. Sir Joh wouldn’t have stood for it, he would’ve been down there along the rivers with the army. That’s what leadership is about. Instead everyone’s dancing wildly, and panic is spreading, and I can’t see how it will dissipate. Sir Joh would’ve known how to take everything in hand. It’s not right that nowadays everyone tries to paint him black. He looked scary but he was harmless, he even did lots of really good things. But people just use him as an excuse to act crazy. In those days people wouldn’t get on lilos and try to ride them fifty kilometers downstream in a flood. The whole region was strictly controlled by Sir Joh. Besides, it’s not like it’s as bad as it was ’67 or ’74. It’s just a whole lot of people getting themselves worked up.