Suzanne Dhesi has a rich family history in Lismore for well over a hundred years. She has been working in retail for most of her life starting with fruit and vegetables and now specialising in cheese and deli products. Suzanne spoke to Denise Alison from Humans of Lismore about her life with a particular focus on the February 28, 2022, flood. A warning the description is quite graphic and may trigger trauma in some people. This story also mentions suicide.

In the early 1900s, my Grandfather came out from India and settled in Lismore. My Grandmother came out in 1942. They already had three boys, so three boys born in India and three boys born in Australia, one of them being my Dad.

My Dad, George Singh, was born in Lismore, and he went to Caniaba school, which is where I also went. I was born in Caniaba.

We grew up growing fruit and vegetables, but in 1993 Mum and Dad decided that they didn’t want us kids looking for a job because it was a bit hard back then, so we bought the Bexhill store from Paul and Trish Bramley.

I was 18 and my parents sent me to TAFE to do a business course for 6 months and from then, I basically ran that shop. I have two brothers, so really it was our job after Mum and Dad’s retirement. My parent’s long-term thinking was the farm was going to be too hard for us.

I was 8 years old in 1984 when we started doing markets with our produce. We were big on strawberries, so we had 5 acres of strawberries and packing and quality control was my job at 8.

I already knew what went into punnets and what was to be made into jam. We would freeze them for the ice cream lady at the markets and it was all so natural to us to have this work ethic from the day we were born.

I have actually been working with Mum and Dad, up until February last year, my whole life.

As a young child, we as a family would go to India every two years, so we knew our background and our family. From the time I turned 18, though, I’ve only been back three times.

It didn’t really matter because I enjoy working, and in between, I got married and had kids. So your family life, your marriage, your business, everything is what you are, and still keeping it real and being yourself. I’m so appreciative of what Mum and Dad did for us. Family does mean everything to me.

I married Bobby in 1992, who is also Indian. He was in Australia and his Dad was in the army with my great uncle. We met when I was 15 and we married at 18.

I wanted to keep my Indian culture. Bobby is more Aussie than we are (laughs). He totally embraced Australia. We lived with Mum and Dad for 3 years, rent and bill free, till we saved up and bought our first place at Rosebank on 15 acres.

We lived in a shed for 7 years and when we borrowed with the ANZ bank the interest rate was 21% because we were young and didn’t have any assets so my parents went guarantor for us. My son Jacob who is now 26 and a Lawyer said, there is not a chance I would do that for my kids (laughs). Bobby worked on our farm and also at a Macadamia farm, I worked in the shop and we paid them back.

I had Jacob in 1996 and went back to work when he was 4 weeks old. He stayed out the back of the shop and he was a little feature for all our customers.

When he started crawling and walking, it was hard to keep him from hurting himself in the shop so I got a walker and tied a dog chain to it so he couldn’t reach the stairs and go onto the road.… He loved watching the traffic go past on the verandah. It sounds terrible but it worked and he was happy and safe. He jokes now that we could’ve been dobbed in for that.

All those years of the humbleness of the Bexhill shop and where we are today has helped us get through what we went through in the flood. I don’t think we’ll ever get over that, but I lost my younger brother in 2016.

His name was Kyal, and he was in the East Lismore siege. Kyal ran the Bexhill shop with me when he was 10 years old. He had severe depression and mental health issues and was fighting his own demons. He took his own life before he came out of that house. I miss him terribly. He was my best friend.

We lost Pirlo’s, which was my husband and my whole life’s work for 30 years. We had amazing staff, 380 customers who we serviced twice a week and more.

It’s a big hit to take but not once have I cried for what we lost because at the end of the day, it’s still just possessions, but what I do cry for is what my husband went through in the flood, because he can’t swim. I also feel the loss of the connection with the people that we had. I feel that void and that emptiness with those long-term customers who became like family.

My husband can’t swim at all. The water started rushing in at midnight. If we’d gone upstairs like they told us to, we would have been gone. The water went to the very top of our roof and I can swim but….… Pitch black dark. Because we had been in that building (Pirlo’s) for 22 years, I knew the place in the dark, plus the fact that we didn’t shut the doors.

We had a flood plan in place that you open the cool room doors and you open all your doors so the water can come straight through the building. I just didn’t realise that this one was like a tsunami of water. It literally picked up our 3-ton fridges and they were gone. There was a 3-ton fridge up in the ceiling when the water receded.

We were in there for 6 hours. It took us half an hour to get through 6 metres of water to where our disabled ramp is. I thought from there, we could step up onto the railing to get height. We had bruises all over our bodies from things hitting us, like fridges, big bins, etc, in the swirling water. I knew my son could see us in the camera surveillance, but then the power went out, and all was black.

Something in me grabbed the roll of plastic bags. I tied our phones in those bags. I put the broccoli boxes under Bobby’s arms to hold him up and I was trying to push him through. At 5am we were on our tippy toes on the railing and it was pitch black. I swam back into the building into the office to save our hard drive and I tied it in a plastic bag onto the rafters. It was still there safe when the water receded. Bobby lost his phone in the panic.

This is the weird thing…I kept saying, this is where we need to go and Bobby was saying where? I said, Can’t you see that orange light over there? He said, there is no light there, but I kept seeing this light. I know now there was no light but I could see a light which saved us because that was where the disability ramp was which got us up higher.

By this stage, we had our heads tilted back with just our faces out of the water. By 5.30 we were under the roof awning and Bobby told me to go. He said… You go and hold on because everybody won’t survive without you and he let me go. ( tears). I said, Mum will kick my arse if I let you go. I tried to keep it light and I said, You need to hold on mate cos the boys need their Dad and my Mum could not handle any more coffins.

He hung on and I dove under the awning and saw a brand new tyre with its inner tube nearby but the water was swirling and forming whirlpools. I had to let go and swim for it and it took me 15 minutes to swim back.

I can tell you now the water was filled with snakes and other creatures and they don’t hurt you because they are fighting to survive too.

As I was swimming back I grabbed a rope floating by, and I had hope. I tied the rope onto a metal pole, dived back under and up to Bobby. By this time Bobby was holding his breath with just his nose out of the water. I said you have to dive under and trust me on this. He couldn’t do it. I ended up grabbing his head and forced him under the awning to come up the other side.

There are still fingernail marks under the ceiling. We ended up coming up on the other side and he hung onto the tyre. We saw the helicopter above, and we waved, and the sun was starting to come up, but they didn’t see us. Bobby said, no-one will rescue us, and he was right. We ended up back on top of the roof, and it was complete strangers in a tinny who rescued us.

It’s a matter of prioritising what your goals are and what you want in life after this. Once again, it is family that is the most important thing.

The SES told us that it would flood at 11am Monday so we stayed the Sunday in the shop to lift but the water was pooling around already. I told them my husband can’t swim, and they told us to go up into our ceiling.

At 11.50pm on the night before it was supposed to flood, I was still ringing, please help us. We felt so abandoned and thought we would die. I felt how my brother must have felt, you rely upon authorities and people who are in those positions to help you.

Kyle was someone that could light up a room before he got sick. People who knew him properly knew how intelligent he was.

My youngest, Leeam, who is 17, now spent so much time with Kyal and he loved him so much. Kyal taught Leeam so much as a young boy. There was 10 years between my boys and 10 years between Kyal and I.

So here I am in the shop next-door to the shop we had for 26 years. My Dad was a local icon. Everyone loves George. I have opened Dhezi Deli and I source my produce locally and all over Australia and the world.

Basically, this is where we began, so I have come full circle. This was originally a butcher shop owned by Scott, Jan and Dave, who were like our adopted family. They always kept an eye on us and made us feel so welcome, so I feel like I’m meant to be here.”