After several weeks of rain from late 2010 to January 2011, much of Queensland was flooded. Brisbane had its turn from 12 January in its worst flooding since 1974.
I live on the third floor of a unit complex next to New Farm Park which is beside the Brisbane River. While the banks of the river are fairly high, and most of the riverside properties around here weren’t affected, our building and a few blocks around are in a slight depression. Our building, built after the 1974 floods, was designed with that water level in mind, so the bottom-floor units were safe as long as the water level didn’t exceed 1974, but our garages are below that – one of them under street level. Luckily, with about 2 days notice, residents managed to move their cars and most other things out of the garages in time. Water started to creep into our street on Wednesday morning 12 January, so I evacuated and stayed with friends Michael and Michelle nearby for a week (thanks!). Sydney Street was underwater for about 3 days, up to about one metre at our place, and our power was off for a week as our main electricity panel and meters went under.
The cleanup effort was impressive – an army of volunteers with brooms and squeegees helped to clean up the mud from the streets and some buildings as trucks took away loads of mud and water-soaked rubbish. A week later, footpaths are still a bit grubby and some businesses are working their way back to normal operation, but otherwise, it’s hard to tell that there was a flood at all around here. We got off very lightly really, compared to a lot of other parts of Queensland which were devastated. If the Wivenhoe Dam wasn’t built after the 1974 floods we would have been a lot worse off, although of course now some people are accusing the operators of the dam of failing to prevent this flood – it’ll be interesting to see how that pans out. The rains have continued south – parts of Victoria are now bracing for flooding.
While being flooded wasn’t exactly fun, it was great seeing so many more people than usual out on the streets and talking with each other. We walked and cycled around this area a few times while the waters were up and watched so many pontoons floating down the river. Here’s some photos of the neighbourhood under water:
