Premium Content 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.