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Published: January 23rd 2011
Warzone!
A surburban street in Westlake, just outside Brisbane.Well, what a few weeks we have had! Thank you everyone for your emails and texts, as previously mentioned we are all fine. Our beautiful city has had a bit of a battering, and many many billions of dollars will be required to rebuild not only Brisbane, but also the rest of Queensland following these horrific floods.
Sadly, New South Wales and Victoria have now been hit with the same weather system, but thankfully whilst there has been flooding, the devastation of Queensland has not been replicated, nor has there been any lives lost.
Following my previous emails and blog, I thought I would share with you the highs and lows of the last few weeks.
The flood hit on Wednesday and Thursday, 10 days ago. On the Saturday Caz and I decided to do our bit and headed over to a friends suburb, who's house was thankfully ok, but who's neighbours had lost everything.
It was a sad sight. The entire side of the road backing onto the river had gone under. Steve owned the house we helped out at. He is a Kiwi and like many in Queensland, had his insurance with an insurer that does not offer flood
cover ( only a few insurers include flood cover here in QLD ). So Steve basically lost everything. The water was to ceiling height. We ripped out the kitchen, all the plasterboard came off the walls and this was following the removal of all his sodden and ruined possessions!
He was a rock! He said he will start again and everything was ok because his family was safe and well.....his attitude was that he was one of the lucky ones!
So we spent the day removing 'stuff' from the house. The Street outside can only be described as a warzone, as you can see from the pictures, but the togetherness of everyone was something rarely seen!
We took our camping stove, a raft of sausages and buns and did the 'sausage butty' lunch for the workers...about 25 of them in total, so it was a day of mixed emotions.
As for the smell, I don't mean the BBQ, ....... you can't quite get over it. It's like a stagnant pond..in your house. Steve found fish in some of the rooms, so you can imagine that is not too pleasant!
So, following a day in the 'warzone' we decided to have
Rubble!
The mounds of possessions littering the street a day of our own on the Sunday.
Its a strange feeling when the city has just suffered and you want to head off and be 'selfish' for the day, but we felt we had earned a day out.
So on Sunday morning we headed a few minutes down the road to the ferry terminal and took the car on the early morning barge over to Stradbroke Island.
It was like another world! So near yet so far from the floods!
We headed to Brown Lake for breaky. Brown Lake is a perched lake....a lake that is freshwater, with a beautiful white silica sand bottom, but with a leaf litter layer under the sand, preventing the water seeping through the sand and providing a beautiful clear swimming lake. This lake is called Brown Lake as the water entering the lake passes through the tee trees and has a brown ( peaty ) colour, but clear!
We cranked up the BBQ, had bacon and eggs, followed by a cool swim in the Lake.
Back in the car and off to the Northern Tip of the island, Point Lookout! Stunning beaches and beautiful ocean, a gorgeous lunch of fresh prawns overlooking the
The Kitchen!
Not much left in here! ocean and an afternoon spent on the beach before returning to the ferry and home!
So there you go, our famine and feast, was floods and sunbathing!
This country really is a country of contrasting landscape and weather.
Since the river peaked last Wednesday, we have had the usual 30+ degree, sunny blue sky days and they are set to continue this week too, with a couple of summer storms thrown in for good measure but that is normal for here! Without the TV and media, we would never know the floods have happened, but driving into the City, the reality does ring true when you see some of the devastated areas.
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