I got sent home from my work in the centre of Brisbane today and told not to come in tomorrow because of the floods…I’ve lived here for over 20 years and I’ve never seen anything like this.
My house backs onto a water course which usually rises whenever we get a decent amount of rain so we’re nervously looking over the back fence. My wife, who is a music teacher, has been putting all her music (some of it irreplaceable) up on all the high shelves in the house, which I will probably take down to make room for guitars and microphones. But so far so good.
This time last year they were counting the days until the water supplies dried up.
“I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains
of rugged mountain ranges, of droughts and flooding rains
I love her far horizons, I love her jewel sea
Her beauty and her terror, the wide brown land for me”
My greatest fear is that the dam will burst since the design of these things is to let water flow over but not underneath and all the debris put weight on the dam wall and it would be an absolute catastrophe if it were to break.
Actually the dam is designed to partially give way if the water gets too high, to save the main structure. They’re releasing quite a bit of water which adds to the problems in the cities downstream. If the dam wasn’t there…I shudder to think. We’d see the events that occurred in Toowoomba yesterday repeated over and over again. But that’s why they built the dam after the catastrophe of 1974.
I’ve just returned from a trip to Australia. My heart goes out to everyone involved in the flooding in Queensland - keep safe. It seems the whole Eastern side of the country is in the grip of a very strange weather system. Sydney had plenty of rain while I was there, and the outback desert around Broken Hill is green! It also rained in Melbourne, but I guess that’s not a big surprise.
Yeah… its been on the news daily here for a while now. I was just talking to my sister in Mt Tamborine (A wee way south of Brisbane). No immediate concerns for her at the moment but she sure is sick of the rain!
Lets hope there’s some relief from it all REAL soon…
Me too. The good news (for me at least) is that it’s stopped raining and the water has gone from behind the house. My sister lives in the affected zone and while they’re dry, they can’t get anywhere, shops are closed etc.
Great trip thanks Wim - it’s a wonderful (and absolutely huge) country with lots of inspirations for a musician to draw upon. England winning the Ashes while I was there was a bonus, but I won’t mention that in this thread
Central Brisbane now in trouble - I hope the waters subside soon.
The big water peak is tomorrow. Had the most surreal experience driving tonight, down a road where you can usually see all the lights in the city buildings- just darkness, because they’ve turned off electricity to large parts of the city. But not here.
I hope your feet will stay dry.
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