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Brisbane Flooding chapter 2

a friends house lies beyond the phone booth out of view

Brisbane Flooding

Yesterday after work, I drove down to Brisbane to go check out what was going on and photograph some of the mayhem. So my friends and I drove to another friends house - where we actually had my welcome home party only a few weeks ago all together. This time though, we all stood up the street from it, at the waters edge looking at the water engulfing the street, houses, pay phone booths and anything else that was in it's path. One of the weirdest things was driving down a street and then suddenly being at a new lake - with kayakers, boaters, and swimmers where solid ground used to be, but the one that made it the most glaringly shocking was seeing a street lined with cars along an incline. The first white van had hgih tide marks all the way to the roof where the dirty water had receded along. Next was a red four door with the front headlights peering out above the murkiness; and finally all you could see a sliver of what looked like a white hummer. Bummer hummer. 

The attitude of the Australian people is astounding. Talk about survivors and optimistic even at the most heart-wrenching of times. For the most part, people are volunteering their help, their clothes, and even opening their homes to strangers to help out their fellow Australian. It's amazing, and makes you proud to be an Australian. I'll pop-pictures up once I get them developed!

Flooding in Australia

The rain will not stop in my state in Australia, Queensland. All around the world the news reports are being heard, and the other day I got to see and experience some of the direct effects of it for myself. Most up the flooding has been in the north of the state, and I'm closer to the south border, and also the coastal area. It's has been mostly the rivers doing the flooding - they have gotten so full they have all just started to overrun the land, then the roads, then even whole towns. 

For work the other day, a colleague and I had to drive 1hour north to the town Gympie - on the way there, the water was already across one lane of the highway, but we persevered and thank God. After 3 hours of what normally is a one hour drive, I was back home. Locals had been thinking they'd be able to get home as of Monday, after the expected peak, but now at Wednesday, and the streets we drove along are now completely lost to the water, and the town flooded WAY more than when I managed to get out.


The local dam (Wivenhoe) is at 191% capacity, and is releasing the equivalent to 6,000 Olympic pools every second. If it swells with more water, it could cause the dam to crumble, which would be a major catastrophe; causing more damage than has already been ravaged.

So far, these are the statistics.
12 killed
51 missing
180,000 without power
bull shark spotted swimming in one town's flooded streets, Goodna


More information can be found here:
http://qldfloods.org


To donate to the flood relief fund:
http://www.qld.gov.au/floods/donate.html


My friends house in Brisbane, which is elevated one floor off the ground level, is flooded inside the house (approximately 9 feet from the ground outside). The sister city, Ipswich, has water to the ceilings. Fears are that for Brisbane, the worst is yet to come. My area missed the worst of it; we were merely cut off from getting home by all the roads in being flooded, but our house situated on quite a large hill now overlooks what we refer to as "Lake Bli Bli". My town of Bli Bli has no lake. Fresh milk and bread are running out - I purchased one of the remaining 4 one litre cartons of milk, and the same goes until roads can open back up from interstate, as production areas in the state are also flooded, and so are shops, malls and electricity to many areas is also gone. ATMs are running out of cash, drinking water is running out ...

I encourage anyone who can to donate to help these people to please do so.

High Road, Low Road

I'm watching this show with my parents as they jokingly argue about the correct name of the weather girl. The show is called High Road, Low Road, and the premise of the show is as the title suggests; one host gets to see the travel destination on an unlimited budget, and the other on a back-packer style budget. They're in Hollywood at the moment, so the differences are quite drastic. Cool hay!

My style is definitely along the low road. Some friends and I actually went to the Hollywood strip on a road trip one time. We refer to it as 'tour de rollercoaster' and we drove from Canada to California in one shot, taking turns driving between the 4 of us in a rental car, and were in northern California swimming in a dam the next morning. The place this 'low road' host stayed was actually way nicer than where we were - he was in a $70USD a night backpackers about two blocks from all the action, and he had upgraded (the standard was aparently $22) to a private room with a kitchen and some other room. This place looked bangin tho! It had freebies like cereal and free beer at karaoke nights and looked like a fun place to hang. We ended up at this dive that looked like it would have been amazing in the 50's .. but had definitely fallen out of care. The four of us shared the one bed .. actually, I think we may have made the boy sleep on the floor. HA. Men are great sometimes. Anyway, this place was literally around the corner from all the action, and pretty good value for money, and kind of ducked away from a lot of the typical skeeze and oddballs, so that was appreciated for the safety of the rental car. From there, we were able to boost all over town, hit up the clubs for some L.A. fun, and just had a wicked trip. I'm totally OK with the low road.

The girls in Hollywood!