RSL Queensland Gympie office reopens months after floods

Veteran and Compensation Advocate Adrian Kosch led the clean-up at the RSL Queensland Gympie office

Once the waters receded, a crowbar had to be used to wrench open the door of the flood-ravaged office.

Over the following weeks, skips worth of putrid rubbish and decaying furniture were ferried out as the RSL Queensland Gympie crew worked tirelessly to rebuild their home-away-from-home following the February floods that inundated swathes of South East Queensland.

Now, months later, the office reinstatement works are complete and the Veteran Services team have moved back in.

The refurb of RSL Queensland’s Cullinane Centre in Gympie kicked off after the Central Queensland town was all but washed away in the floods that caused the Mary River to swell to oceanic proportions, decimating shops, homes and farms.

Some of the flood damage at the Gympie office

Shortly after, amid widespread network outages and despite dealing with the mess on his flood-affected farm, Adrian Kosch – a veteran and Compensation Advocate in the Veteran Services team - led the gargantuan clean-up charge.

“The initial aftermath was shocking,” he said.

“It was really putrid and everything just stunk … when I first turned up to the office it was like someone had come in and ransacked the house and left it to fester. There were massive bits of furniture that had just floated out and we were initially stuck outside,” Adrian said.

The crew forced their way in using a crowbar in an incredible effort that Adrian said was almost becoming the norm in Gympie.

“We have been flooded three times now … but you can’t just ‘boo hoo’ - you have to go in and fix it. You’ve just got to suck it up,” he said.

With the help of the ‘tough-as-nails' RSL Queensland Assets team, and an outside crew who were contracted by the building’s owners, Adrian said no time was wasted turfing out the ransacked flotsam and jetsam and bringing the space back to life.

The refurbished office is now back in business 

“Assets have done a lot of the hard work, and we’ve been here and helped to get stuff done when we can. But it’s good to be back in our office and now everything is coming back to normal. And all the other places in town are coming back and slowly getting built too,” he said.

“In Gympie, all the banks bar one got flooded, so it’s all the things like that [that made it extra challenging]. At one stage, no one could get any money.

“But again, the Assets team were just awesome and then there was the Gympie RSL Sub Branch who let us go up there and take over their office and let us use their facilities - they were incredible.

“Everyone here has done their bit and that’s how we roll and that’s how the town is getting back on its feet.

“People are already preparing for the next one because there’s predictions of big rains coming in July. But until that happens, we’ll keep plodding along … we will just find a way to work through it.”

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