Extraordinary community clean-up effort allows social bowls to return at Euroa

They were tasked with helping drain out and remove mud from the greens, tearing out the saturated carpet in the clubhouse, sorting through damaged items and mopping up leftover floodwater — with everybody having just one objective in mind.

Getting the club back up to hosting games of bowls again.

And incredibly — some five days after the floods descended on Euroa — the cleaning crew achieved its mission, with the club able to host its social bowls event on Wednesday.

“It is just brilliant to be at a stage where we can host some bowls again,” Euroa Bowling Club president Richard Noble said.

“To see the whole community come together to help us out, it was a wonderful thing and shows how lucky we are down here in Euroa.

“In terms of today’s games I’m not sure many will play because they are so worn out from the clean-up, but to be able to give our members a game of bowls given everything that’s happened — it’s just incredible.”

Like many across the region, the rapid rate of the rising floodwaters caught the people at Euroa Bowling Club by surprise.

As the situation worsened on Thursday night, Noble described what was a frantic rush to prepare the club from the impending floodwaters.

“It all started on Thursday night, the warnings just kept on coming through of major flooding, so we quickly went down to the club and sandbagged the doorways,” he said.

“We did all we could to try and stop as much water coming into the club, but by Friday morning we had eight inches of water all through the rooms.

“The greens ended up looking like swimming pools and were just taken aback, the clean-up job was going to be a big one.”

Faced with a nervous waiting game, committee members were eventually able to re-enter the facility on Friday afternoon, where they were able to get a complete idea of the damage.

“We lost all of our carpets and the underlay from the clubhouse, and as a result we are now stripped back to bare boards throughout the whole building” Noble said.

“We also lost a bit of furniture, a few electrical appliances, and the gas and central heating had to be removed.

“So there was certainly a fair bit of damage for us to work through, and now we are still a bit on edge about how the structural integrity of the building will hold up.”

Assessing the damage, it was clear the club was going to need some help to get back up to scratch.

But with the local shire council being completely stretched helping others in the community, the club was initially unable to get any official assistance, forcing members to take matters into their own hands.

“On Monday morning we got the go ahead from the shire to lift the carpets from the clubrooms, but there was no available staff to give us a hand, so the decision was made to form our own clean-up crew and get to work,” he said.

“We put the call out over Facebook and 30 of our bowlers along with their family and friends came down to the club for the clean-up.

“Beginning at 8.30am on Tuesday everyone put their head down, got to work and incredibly by 5pm we had done it all.

“Seeing everybody come together like that was quite brilliant, and something I am very proud of.”

Now in a suitable state to at least host some bowls, the club now waits with bated breath as the Goulburn Valley Playing Area begins to map out a return to play for its midweek and Saturday pennant competition.

Also slated to host matches as part of the Victoria Open in November, Noble said the folks at Euroa “will be ready” to play their part in the showcase event.

“We’ve got nearly 200 bowlers coming to the club in early November for the Victoria Open, so our focus is now making sure we are set for that,” he said.

“We’ll have new carpets to put down by then and we will be ready for the event.”