Brisbane Floods

Thank you all who have been sending messages of support.

The river peaked at 4.1metres (14ft) at 3pm this afternoon. And the following pictures were taken at that time. There is still to be another 1.2 metres (4ft) of water tonight and tomorrow.

As you will see, its going to be a long night. I guess looking on the upside, we now have significant river views.

The end of our street. The cars are slowly being moved to other locations, I have ours up on higher ground.

This is across the street. Those containers had my neighbours BMW motorcycle, a forklift, and a ride on mower. He is away in New Zealand, so we cut the locks and moved all of that into my garage. Hence the tracks out of the water... the forklift didn't want to come.

This is his next door neighbour and the house directly across the street from me. They have dug down to create another level... instead they now have a pool....

Another metre and they will lose power as the metre box is in the lower level. The machinery to the right of the picture, is his bobcat which we used to get the forklift out.

This is the park at the top of our street, whom most visitors will recognise. That water stretches as far as the eye can see, and the sporting grounds on the other side are further under.

More park... or swamp... unfortunately, the industrial district 'upstream' has flooded and the hydralic fluid and oils from their workshops are in the water... Which has caused the sewerage system to fail... so now that water has poo, pee, oil and other stinky crap.

This will be under by morning.

This is a shot from my neighbours balcony. That water goes all the way back to the school sporting grounds which are well under.

This is my neighbours backyard... the creek at the bottom of their yard is now connected directly to their house (as seen earlier) The worst part now (other than the smell) is the snakes and leeches. We've seen a few BIG snakes already, and the water at the end of the street is teaming with leeches...

Those pontoons at the top of the picture are normally about 3 metres (10 ft) below the land level...

So here we are... Across the street, maybe 20 metres (60 ft) from all that. And there is expected to be another rise in the next 24 hours. Mel and Hudson are safe and up on higher ground at her sisters. I am going back and forth to the house and checking the levels, and helping my neighbours move stuff upstairs.

I can no longer drive into the street, as the surrounding streets are officially closed (under water) so I have been getting as close as I can and walking in.

So while I paint this dire picture, I'd like to formally say, I was and am proud to be an Australian today. Our hardware stores were not prepared for this (how could they be) and so the SES (State Emergency Service) deployed and their tireless efforts have provided people with some help. I lined up for an hour to get 25 sandbags (which covered one of the garage doors) and while they have to ration them out, that was not going to help me. Instead I got empty bags, and my neighbour had a large pile of dirt he had planned to use for landscaping etc (which funnily enough came from the excavation of my pool) At 10am this morning I started the task of hand shovelling this dirt into 200 sandbags. It was slow going, with the help of a couple of friends. However, during that next hour, over 20 people who I had never met, or for the most part, I still do not know their names, pitched in and brought shovels and we filled those sandbags in less than an hour. They lived higher up and were driving the streets looking to help. One group brought 30 already filled sandbags that they had lined up for 3 hours for and were looking for someone to help.

Sandbags by themselves however are not enough, the water can penetrate, we needed some plastic or other water proof material to surround the house and use with the sandbags. Again there was none left at stores. I drove up to a new estate area, and there were some builders working, and they had some scrap plastic on the ground, so I pulled up and asked them if I could take it... Not only did they let me have the scrap, one of the builders had an entire brand new roll of plastic (easily $100 worth) and got it out of his truck and put it in my car, the other builders helped me roll up the scrap (tools down while they did this) and put it in my car. In the end I collected enough to surround the house as you can see.

Without the help of good friends, Ant, Johnno, Penny, Tina, great neighbours, Adam, Darryl and Richard and the help of lots of strangers, this could have been a significantly more difficult task.

I hope the effort is wasted and the water doesn't rise high enough to test our work, but if it does, then I know we tried our best, and a heartfelt thank you to all those, who will probably never read this. My job tommorrow is to pay this forward!

Family and friends, follow Mel on Facebook, or watch here for an update this time tommorow, wish up luck, and know that the house is not worth my life, I will not be fighting hard for it!

K.