True history of Brisbane’s Mud Army

They seem to have materialised in 2011 as a response to the Summer of Disaster, but Brisbane’s now famous “Mud Army’’ has a noble tradition stretching back more than one century.

They seem to have materialised in 2011 as a spontaneous response to the tragedy of the Summer of Disaster, yet Brisbane’s now famous “Mud Army’’ has a noble tradition stretching back more than one century.

Organic, inclusive, free of government or even basic administrative oversight, the Mud Army represents all that is good about Queensland communities, illustrating that natural desire to assist others without any expectation of reward or recognition.

In 1893, after the “Black February’’ floods when the Brisbane River burst its banks three times in four week, the then Mayor of South Brisbane Thomas Heaslop noted the spirit encapsulated by the Mud Army was already flourishing in a state capital which, relative to today, was little more than a shanty town.

Thanking fundraisers who gathered money for the Flood Relief Distribution committee, Heaslop noted that many South Brisbane flood victims “appeared to forget their own losses in their solicitude for the suffering of others.’’

“The calamity, dreadful though it was, was a means of good in one respect,’’ Heaslop noted in a report published in the Brisbane Courier following the floods.

“It brought people of all shades of opinion and of all nationalities together to work for the common good and in the case of suffering humanity.’’

Just over 80 years later the same spirit swept the city after the 1974 floods which cost 16 lives and peaked over the January Australia Day weekend.

Neighbour helped neighbour and volunteers appeared from nowhere prompting a Courier Mail February 2 1974 editorial which said in part:

“Queenslanders take a bow. This week in the face of disaster people have responded superbly.

“Many flood victims have been awed by the way folk - often total strangers - spontaneously arrived to help.

“There is no glamour in shovelling mud or scrubbing muck-encrusted walls.

“It is hard, stinking drudgery.’’

Yet it was only in mid January 2011, even before the flood waters had receded, that the “Mud Army’’ received its honorific and became a nationally recognised phenomenon.

The 2011 Mud Army consisted of tens of thousands of people who, without any directive, arrived at flooded homes with rubber gloves, shovels and sometimes even heavy earthmoving equipment to clean up in an amiable atmosphere of shared endeavour.

The power of social media almost certainly played a role in spreading the world of the movement, spurring others to join in what was, at times, a marauding, chaotic and utterly leaderless army driven not my conquest but compassion.

Then Brisbane Mayor Campbell Newman, a passionate believer in the ability of ordinary people to deal with problems without the need for government interference, was ecstatic:

“The volunteers turned out and that we cleaned up Brisbane and put it back on its feet .... we can hold our heads high forever after this,’’ he declared a year later.

This week there are signs that this apparently infinite wellspring of charitable endeavour is being harnessed by a bureaucracy.

The Brisbane City Council has called on new Mud Army recruits to “sign up,’’ and there are indications the army will be issued directives, such as starting off in the worst hit areas.

Mayor Adrian Schrinner, talking with 4BC breakfast host Neil Breen earlier this week, was clearly impressed with the recruitment drive.

“In a matter of hours, we got 8000 people sign up to Mud Army 2.0 and those registrations keep coming in,” Schrinner said.

Yesterday the call went out from the Mayor’s office for the entire mud Army to stand down until Saturday because of concerns about severe weather.

It’s a sensible move to give direction to a mass of people who, as homeowners discovered in 2011, could get a little too enthusiastic, throwing out damaged household items which may have been required to stay put for insurance assessments.

But it is to be hoped that the army’s spirit is not going to be extinguished by the dead hand of bureaucracy.

If it’s ever formalised into some form of government-funded program its soul will die, replaced by committees and advisory groups who will use terms like “service delivery’’ and “stake holders’’ and “placed based initiatives’’ to blast the benevolence out of something so benign – something so illustrative of the human spirit which, for all its faults, can be so selfless and kind when it witnesses another’s suffering.

ends.