Caz and Matthew Crane open Woolooga Longyard and four other businesses

A family of four is working to bring life back into the small township west of Gympie, but the journey hasn’t been easy after flooding forced the family to start from scratch. Read their inspiring story, watch the video:

A Gympie region family-of-four is bringing their small country town back to commercial life, despite being forced to start again after they lost everything in the January flood of 2022.

Caz and Matthew Crane own five businesses in Thomas St, the main street of Woolooga, a picturesque country town off the Wide Bay Hwy between Gympie and Kilkivan, with a population of 247 (at the 2016 census).

The shops, which include a cafe and green grocer, an animal feed and rural supplies store, a hairdresser, a bed and breakfast, and a licensed bar and grill, run out of the historic Woolooga Trader building.

The Cranes moved to the Gympie region from the Sunshine Coast in 2020, and bought the historic building in July 2021.

But it was not an easy journey.

Woolooga woman Caz Crane said water inundated her and husband Matthew’s businesses in the January deluge. Photo: GoFundMe

At the start of 2022, a torrential downpour from ex-tropical cyclone Seth turned Thomas St into a river, taking the Crane’s businesses with it.

Mrs Crane said the water reached about 500mm inside their businesses, but she was only alerted to the disaster after an early morning text from another resident.

“(They said) ‘Caz, do you want to have a look at your shops?’ and they were under water,” she said.

“So I lost everything … We weren’t prepared. We weren’t expecting that amount of rain.

The Woolooga Trader was given new life by Caz and Matthew Crane after they moved to the Gympie region from the Sunshine Coast and began their business ventures in the tiny country town of Woolooga. Photo: Elizabeth Neil

“I lost all my stock. I lost all my fridges, freezers and it was uninsured for flood.”

But despite the adversity, the Crane’s pushed on, and like a phoenix rising from the ashes – or in this case, the mud – they worked to re-establish their businesses.

Three weeks ago, they opened their fifth and final venture, The Woolooga Longyard, a bar and grill; and business has been booming.

“We’ve tried to bring Woolooga back,” Mrs Crane said.

Caz and Matthew Crane own five businesses in the heart of Woolooga, including their most recent addition: The Woolooga Longyard Bar and Grill (pictured behind them). Photo: Elizabeth Neil

Mrs Crane, who worked as a hairdresser for 30 years, said the idea was borne from a need to work and the idea of creating something for their children.

“My daughter needed work. I needed a job. It was either create something for yourself or go and work for someone else,” she said.

“Now people are making it a destination because they can come out and have a meal at night time, or Sunday afternoon lunch and drinks and catch up.

“The new locals that have been here in the last five or six years, they’ve said ‘we moved here and there was nothing here, you have now brought life to a little town that had nothing in it’.”

The Woolooga Longyard’s kitchen open from 5.30pm until 9pm every night.