Patricia Doyle: Palm Is Where the Heart Is

Patricia Doyle: Palm Is Where the Heart Is ===

[00:00:00]

Um, my name's Ben. Hi, Patricia Francis. And your sisters? Yeah. Proper sisters. Yep. I'm gonna record, is that okay? Yeah, that's fine. So this is, yeah, this is for pick. Talking about the storm. Mm-hmm. Um, firstly of all just, what's your full name? Sorry? Uh, Patricia Doyle. Yeah. And cr do. Thought Doyle would be your last name.

I had a feeling. Yeah. Yeah. Um, what, what about, little bit about yourselves though. Tell me are you like, um, how you identify, how you hang with Palm? What's that sort of stuff? Uh, I identify as aboriginal, um, I got family here. Mm-hmm. So 40 tribes of Erman. Yeah. Cool. My mom grew up here and we kind of just came over too.

All grew up here. Cool. What do you think of Palm? Palm is where the hardest? Yeah. Yeah. It's just you wanna come back here like it's all right in the mainland, but which I wanna just come back and own your own bed. True. And [00:01:00] what about working here? What do you think about working here? It's cool. Yeah? Yeah, it's good.

What do you make, what's your main stuff you do? Tile shop, everything and anything that we will train for with lots of like talking like customer support stuff or do you do, yeah. Yeah. And tell us about what happened. W were you around for the storm? Were you here when the storm happened? Yeah, we was here, we was, um, 'cause we live in two different areas, so she lives Bay and I live Rodeo Grand.

Mm-hmm. So, yeah. Um, power went out our biggest, like what? Rain for Daisy. We had to stop working and go home and, mm-hmm. Then that big landslide happened just by Doctor Point and so I didn't even know about that until, like, until the whole power went there next day. Yeah. True. Yeah. Found out about it. But the power came back on.

Yeah. But ours down there kind of was off the whole entire night. So like, basically like 17 hours I think it was. And then I had to get something like that. Yeah. Something like that. And then I had to get Ergon to come up and fix it all up and then we couldn't even go anyway. [00:02:00] 'cause that's our main road from top to point to farm in other places.

That was right. Yeah. So. Um, what about family and stuff? Were they all different circumstances, different places? Yes. Yeah. I live around where the airport is. Yeah. So she lives all the way that way. I live closer to the dam. Yeah. How did you feel the community coped with the storm? I think the community coped really well with it because then everyone was checking on everybody, like neighbors were checking on neighbors and just checking if, um, everything was okay, keeping update, what's going on, and yeah, so it was really felt.

Warm. Mm, that's good. But no one was left out. Nothing. If someone needed something, there's always a lending hand, which is really good. Yeah. Um, and there was a bit of food and water and stuff getting passed around. Is that Yeah, I think you see that. Yeah. The next day. Yeah. When the, 'cause the store, I think that whole, how actually say that was getting, um, driving around, giving food to old people, [00:03:00] make sure they was okay and go, and then just checking.

You don't have water to everyone. Yeah. Yeah. Um, what do you, is there anything needs to happen for the in case, like when the next ones roll around, do you think, is there anything gonna improve on how things, how the community cope with it or things community need in the future for staff or, or do you think it was handled pretty well?

Like, I think it was, I think it was handled pretty well. Pretty well. Cool. I think the only thing they need to do is, um, probably. Prepare, uh, uh, evacuation via the soul. Make sure that's up to date in their houses. 'cause it's better have to evacuate and go somewhere else. They'll allow us the main stuff.

Yeah. And is this sort of pick related, this work here? Yep. So this is Pick and Telstra. Cool. Um, what sort of stories do you think need to be told about Pick and Palm Island that hasn't been told yet? Do you reckon there's other stories that should be told about. Employees or I think pick plays a [00:04:00] really good, uh, really big part in all of the areas on the island mainly.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. And we buy a lot of jobs for a lot of people too, which is a good thing for us. Yeah. Because there's hardly any jobs. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Do you think there's, um, a story that hasn't been told about pick we should tell, or what do you reckon? Nah, I dunno. I That's fine. We're just over here in our little well, but yeah.

There's a big crew over there that'll probably tell you their story with that crew. Yeah. Yeah. It's good because there's all different parts of, there's different parts of the picks, so whether pick Telstra people and then you'll have like the pick other people, but yeah. Okay. Yeah. Amazing. I'm gonna take a photo.

Oh, okay. Is that all right? Yeah. Food. Yeah, we're good.