The Power of Community

A lot of us buy a place in the country to get away from the mayhem of the big city and savour the peace and quiet of the bush. Be that as a permanent resident, or a part timer. Especially as a part timer. You have your family and friends and that’s all you need and you can’t be bothered spending precious time being nice to people you hardly know.

Strength in numbers

You never know when you will need a helping hand.  It may be alright to think you can look after yourself, most of the time. Until the day you can’t. It might be a natural disaster you were unprepared for, or a medical emergency, or it could be as simple as a bogged tractor. It could be a pipe fitting that broke that you don’t have a spare for and you can’t turn the water back on until you fix it. Bunnings is a two hour round trip away and you’re in a pickle. Just think, there’s probably a bloke up the road with a box of plumbing pieces in his shed with just the bit you need. Pity you can’t give him a ring and ask him. They may not look like much now, but on the day, they can seem like an insurmountable problem for one person to overcome.

It’s nice to know you’re not alone when things go belly up

For rural landholders on the front line, it’s important to remember that a fire or flood doesn’t stop at the fence. What befalls your neighbour will inevitably impact you. You may rightly choose to evacuate and leave nature to do its worst. But what remains when you return will be yours to contend with. No amount of insurance can alleviate that pain.

What will you do if you decide to stay? How prepared will you be when the bushfire comes over the hill and the guys and girls from the local brigade are busy helping save another house? Maybe they will get to you eventually, or maybe they won’t. And the bloke next door is less inclined to give you a hand since you were much too busy or important to help his wife change a flat tyre in the rain.

Be nice and take the time to say “G’day” when you pass the neighbours on the track and offer to give a bloke a hand to lift that table off his ute. One day that 15 minutes of your time could pay dividends 10 times over. 

The power within a community of near neighbours, is an undervalued resource. 

Landholders brought together in a neighbourhood community, motivated by a common self-interest to protect and enhance their own asset, have the potential to achieve far greater outcomes than any bureaucracy. With the ability to operate effectively with significantly less financial and organisational support, a small neighbourhood can achieve results far beyond the possibilities of a government organisation’s ability to achieve a similar outcome, for the same low cost. And Upper Yango has proven this. 

For the people in power, it should be an obvious win-win. By supporting and resourcing small communities to do the work, the levels of organisation are significantly reduced, the cost is minimised and the agency's risk is absorbed by the community. The appropriate safeguards and guardrails must remain in place. But the transfer of authority to motivated communities that demonstrate their capability, can deliver widespread benefits on both sides. Just be careful that a bureaucracy's need for power or personal ego, doesn’t derail the conversation.