All for karma

RESIDENTS affected by floods in Victoria’s north have been gifted hundreds of pairs of gumboots thanks to The Happy Shoe and Scrubs Shop in Geelong.

Business owner Peggy Knowles said she felt compelled to help people in the affected regions after customers from Rochester visited her Newtown store and spoke of the difficulties they were heading back to.

“They were just, you know, like, “we’re heading home, our house is gone” and oddly enough, I’m actually from Rochester, New York, so we just got chatting,” the small-business owner said.

“That sort of led from one thing to another and I just said ‘look, I have gumboots that I can donate’.

“I felt really compelled to help.”

Ms Knowles said the Rochester residents made a trip back to Geelong with a trailer to pick up a load of gumboots which they distributed to people who needed them.

Days later, Ms Knowles said she and her daughter drove up to see first-hand what was happening in one of the state’s most flood affected regions.
“It makes me very teary because it’s so emotional to see…it’s so confronting,” she said.

“To physically see stores with every piece of furniture on the road side, and all the goods gone and then the homes and the schools, the library books on the side and little elderly residents are just sitting on the front porch and all their belongings on the front lawn, it literally was very heart-breaking and very challenging.”

The Geelong Lions Club helped transporting the gumboots to residents in Rochester, Echuca and surrounds, completing their fourth trip to the region last week.

Ms Knowles, who trained as a nurse, has spent the past 10 years building her businesses which focuses on providing comfortable footwear for people with foot problems, and tailored work wear for people in the medical profession and said she’s glad to have been able to help.

“That’s what we’re all about here is helping people… that nursing side of me still always comes out.

“To have been in a position to have a large stock of gumboots on hand and then this unfortunate situation that’s happened to our country to our state and abroad… it’s just something we can do.

“We’ve sent over 1,000 pairs of gumboots now, to Rochester and Echuca, all free, all for karma, paying it forward… it’s just good.”