Motherland Australia

263: "No warning" - Shonelle Turner on the reality of rural flood recovery

Stephanie Trethewey

At the start of this season we dropped a bonus episode about what it was like living through the devastating floods in outback Queensland. Two months on, that devastation is still being felt. But the aftermath isn’t getting a lot of media coverage. Shonelle Turner lives with her husband and five kids in the rural town of Eulo in outback Queensland, between Cunnamulla and Thargomindah - the floods absolutely ravaged properties and uprooted the lives of many families around her. Now, as floods continue to devastate parts of New South Wales, there’s simply not enough talk about what happens after the water goes down. Shonelle is a proud indigenous woman and has an incredible story that spans being a teen mum, to changing the lives of young Indigenous women through her work. Today she joins me to talk about everything from life as the only female in the shearing sheds, to her children being frequent flyers on the Royal Flying Doctors Service, and the ongoing impact of the floods on the community she loves. This is her story.

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