The 1996 Queensland Floods
Normal view from the Global Office... paradise on the banks of the Brisbane river.
By 10am the river had fallen about a metre from its peak below the global office.
The rains are constant and hard... looks like they might continue now until next weekend!
Some houses on the banks of the Brisbane River in Karana Downs
have now been evacuated because of slippage. The soil has become so wet that it has lost its firmness and texture. It is just "sloshy"
you can put your foot down and sink several inches into previously rock solid earth.
The house on the right is sitting on the edge of the big slip that has taken away the whole of its front garden. Luckily we have a large retaining wall between our home and the river so we should be safe from such an unfortunate fate.
The weir looks like it is starting to break up. The road surface under
several metres of gushing water certainly has as the flow viewed in these pictures illustrate.
The following rainfall figures received from the met office tell the story:
Falls over the last 24 hours:
The level of the Brisbane river has started to recede slowly during the course of the day. We saw our first sunlight in 7 days this
afternoon. In fact as I write this the sun is casting its dying rays into the trees in the valley, the leaves glistening like morning dew on the grass.We live in hope that they will not open the gates of Wivenhoe Dam as we are sure that this will have a profound effect on the river bank which is sodden and delicate and starting to collapse in a number of areas.
Our South African friends have, for the first time since arriving here on
Wednesday last week, experienced the famous Queensland sun, even if this was for a brief moment between showers... which are
now starting to return.
Return to the great flood of 1996