It doesn't rain, but it pours

Back in 1973, my Mum, Dad, brother, sister and I upped sticks and emigrated to Australia as 20 pound poms. It was a huge undertaking for my Mum and Dad, going to the other side of the planet, with three young kids. Mum and Dad bought a small house in Sherwood, in the suburb of Brisbane about 3 months after we arrived and Dad managed to score a job in a local factory, things were looking good.



Six months later, this was the view down our street. Those two houses to the left of the power pole were our next door neighbours. You can't see our house because it was completely under water in between them.
Welcome to Australia.
Mum and Dad had been thinking of moving down to Canberra, since we had family down there. The locals in Brisbane were so good to flood victims that they decided Brisbane was where they wanted to stay. These were the kind of people we wanted to live with, and rightly so.
After the flood, the government built the Wivenhoe Dam, not only as a supply of drinking water, but also to help prevent future floods in Brisbane and Ipswich.

We'll never have another '74 floods we all thought.

As I write this, the Bremer River is at 16.9m. If it gets to the predicted 22m, my stepdaughter's house on the banks of the river will be completely under water, just like Mum and Dad's place in '74. If you saw their house a couple of weeks ago, you wouldn't believe the water would ever come up that high.

The Logan River, which is about 300m from the bottom of my brother's back yard usually is now at over 14m and lapping the back fence. Laurie reckons that if the river gets to 22m there, they'll be inundated as well.

Even though I was only nine years old back in the '74 floods, I still remember what the people of Brisbane, those not flooded, did for the victims of the floods. It brought the whole city together.
We lost pretty much everything we'd brought from England in the floods. Weaker people than my parents would have chucked it in and gone back home, but Mum and Dad stuck it out. We had mud in our ceiling once the water receded, and I'll never forget that smell, something I suspect I'll be experiencing soon when we help Jess (my stepdaughter) and Brett (her hubby) clean their house.

When it comes right down to it, as Brett said, the stuff in your house is just stuff. They got all their animals out, and their wedding photos, memories, etc are all on a hard-drive that Brett rescued. Jess's wedding dress is still in the house, and a lot of funiture they've bought and the renovations they've done since they moved in a couple of years ago wil quite possibly be chucked out. They'll miss that stuff for sure, but if this year is anything like '74, this disaster will hopefully bring the community together.

And to think, a couple of years ago we were in a drought and the Wivenhoe Dam was at around 16%, it's now at about 170%