Friedrichs’ Grateful For Community Support

Early in 2011, Georgie and Abi Friedrichs and their family’s home, in Murphys Creek near Toowoomba, was devastated by flooding, damaging their home beyond repair. While their living situation since hasn’t been ideal, the help of their local community, including the Touch Football community, has helped the family get back to some sort of normality. And it wasn’t just support from the South West Queensland Touch Football community that helped the Friedrichs’ family, with Touch Football ACT also donating money to the cause. Earlier in the year, Touch Football ACT held a Charity Cup event after parts of Queensland were devastated by floods. They raised $4,000 from the event, and after hearing about the Touch Football-loving Friedrichs’ and their situation, decided to contribute the money to the family. For 18-year-old Abi and 16-year-old Georgie, the generosity of people, some they didn’t even know, overwhelmed the girls, who are extremely grateful for the amount of help that they’ve received. “We’ve had heaps of support from people that we don’t even know or remember, just workplaces and friends from when you were little. Our Touch friends as well, our club sides, have been really helpful, just helping you move on from what happened and actually realising that you are not exactly the same as you were so that’s been really good,” Abi said. The Friedrichs’ have been through a lot this year, but their positive outlook has held them in good stead, while they’ve also realised what is important. “It’s just figuring out what you haven’t got, like clothes, and things that you took for granted, just small things and things that you can’t get back like photos and books. You figure out what you haven’t got and figure out if you need it again because once it’s gone you realise that you didn’t really need it.”Touch Football has been a big part of the girls’ lives, with Georgie recently making the Queensland Under 16’s team that will travel to New Zealand in December. Attending the National Youth Championships is something that they both enjoy, with the opportunity to play teams from across Australia an exciting part of the event for the girls. “Being able to play against different states and different teams from different regions, you get so used to playing the regions that you are in, you get so used to seeing the same faces, it’s just good to play other teams,” Abi said. The Friedrichs’ received good news recently when they got approval to build a new house on their property, this time on higher ground.“We’ve actually been living in the house that’s been destroyed, we had some very nice people rebuild the side of the house and do the chip rocking, it’s smaller and is more open to the elements than it was but it is liveable,” Abi said. “Hopefully building starts this weekend. It took forever to get the approval but now that we’ve got it, it will hopefully be back up by Christmas.”