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THE 2011 floods in Ipswich were not a first for Blair MP Shayne Neumann.
As a boy living with his family in Trumper St, East Ipswich in 1974, he experienced the devastation inflicted on a city unprepared for such an environmental disaster.
With his own house under more than two metres of water in '74, Mr Neumann's family fled to North Booval, only to be forced to evacuate a second time when the Bremer River rose there.
He still remembers the vital contribution made by then-councillor Des Freeman and his wife Colleen in helping flood victims.
The ability of the community to help its own is a theme that still resonates.