There is a distinct sound attached to a Vic Emergency app notification.
Unlike the simple ‘ding’ of a text message or slightly higher-pitched ‘ping’ of social media platforms, the alert from the emergency services app is multi-tonal, its dual noises giving its notifications the urgency they require.
For many residents of Greater Shepparton and beyond, that noise is also a mental portal back to this time last year when the now-dubbed October 2022 floods gripped the region.
When the alerts began flowing in last week for minor flooding across the region, many residents couldn’t help but think back to one of the worst natural disasters in recent memory, even if the forecast and predictions were clear and concise this time.
It didn’t always feel that way last year.
Looking back at the live blogs the Shepparton News and McPherson Media Group journalists produced at the time gives me a feeling of uneasiness in the pit of my stomach.
We certainly didn’t know what we were in for.
As the situation in Seymour and Rochester began to become more severe on October 12 and 13, the Greater Shepparton community came to understand what might be coming our way.
But I still remember driving around on Friday, October 14, and Saturday, October 15, with as many worldly belongings as I could fit in my car — and then as many sandbags — watching people having a picnic by Victoria Park Lake or clamouring for a good view of the rising river levels.
And of course, there were those making sure their lawns were nice and trimmed ahead of the impending inundation.
It provided an almost dystopian backdrop to what we were experiencing in the ‘newsroom’.
The old cliche is that news is a 24-hour business.
But with most of The News’ editorial staff either evacuated from their homes or hosting those who were, covering the unfolding flooding situation became precisely that.
We were out and about (safely), trying to be the eyes and ears of the community, writing stories and producing content from whichever scrap of loungeroom floor or kitchen table we could commandeer.
All the while, those Vic Emergency notifications continued to clamour.
Mostly, they were a background hum. But early on the Saturday evening, when the causeway between Shepparton and Mooroopna was about to be closed to traffic, they became a crescendo of noise.
Eerily, I seem to remember the ‘noise’ easing off on the Sunday and Monday.
As the peak rolled in, and everything that could be done to prepare had been carried out, the city held its breath as one.
It was only as the water began to recede across the rest of the following week that the full extent of the damage was revealed.
In the 12 months since the Goulburn River, Broken River and Seven Creeks peaked at one-in-100-year flood levels, many residents who haven’t been able to move on have watched much of the region return to a sense of normality.
It is true that those who were lucky enough to escape the situation with nothing more than wet socks have the luxury of looking at the October 2022 floods in the rear-view mirror.
The dozens of people in Shepparton (and hundreds or even thousands across the wider region) still looking at the disaster firmly through the front windscreen need our support this week more pertinently than most.
So let the one-year anniversary allow you an opportunity to pause first for reflection, and then let it serve as a reminder to reach out to those around you who might not have been so lucky.
We are certainly all in this together, but ‘this’ means more to some than most.
Just like the squawk of an emergency notification means much more than a cursory nuisance to many of us.