Waking up to Flooding

I awoke this morning well aware of the likely consequences of the rising Brisbane River, like everyone here. The morning's media reports showed a lot of the impact. With their courtesy, here are some of the images being shown on morning television here. The image above shows the South Bank Parklands, and in particular Streets Beach which many tourists would know. Now, its a dirty, murky pool. All around the precinct is underwater. GOMA, one of my favourite places in Brisbane, looks to be submerged. Similarly, another relatively new tourist icon, the Wheel of Brisbane, is also underwater.




Another amazing image which greeted me was sections of the Brisbane Riverwalk breaking free and floating down the river. The tug boat operators did a magnificent job in ensuring this massive slab of concrete, weighing close to 100 tons, didn't hit any of the other infrastructure on the river. This walkway conneted the Brisbane city area around to New Farm. Having walked and run on this walkway many times, its sad to think that this is now gone.

Across the city, various parts that people who have visited may know well have been flooded. As these next few shots show, the Albion Park Paceway is underwater, as is the Breakfast Creek Hotel, and the Brisbane Tennis Centre at Tennyson.





While it is easy to show icons and the impact to our Tourist Industry, we must also consider the impact to our local homes and businesses, which truly bring home the tragedy of what has occurred here. Drift, a restaurant on the river at Milton is totally underwater. This business can be rebuilt, but will need to be done from scratch.



Finally, this shot from Fairfield shows the scope of the impact to my fellow Brisbaneites. Houses are totally underwater, where only the roofs are showing. My heart goes out to these residents, but thankfully, despite the material damage, as long as people and families are together and safe this will allow us to clean up this mess once the waters recede. The extent of these floods not only here in Brisbane, but throughout Queensland and now Northern New South Wales is massive.



Please, if you can, I urge you to donate to the Queensland Flood Relief on the Queensland government website.

Cheers, I Love Brisbane, Wes.