2011 Brisbane Floods (Part 2)

What a week! These past few days have definitely been interesting. A couple of hours after my last post, we lost power. I was naive to say ‘hopefully we won’t lose power’. Of course we would! And we didn’t get it back for three days (although it didn't come with internet or our landline). The strange thing is that we didn’t complain about it and didn’t find it a nuisance. It sort of added to the experience.

Blogging about the floods now is old news because of the widespread coverage of it but I still have to get my story out. You all want to know how I spent my time don’t you?

My post last Tuesday was when the city started flooding. However, the peak wasn’t due until the early morning of Thursday. By mid morning on Wednesday, the little hill that we live on was basically cut off either because of flooded roads or the police closing off roads because of rising water levels.

The people in the lower lying areas evacuated but we chose to stay because we had plenty of food and, to be honest, we wanted to be where the action was. Our house is a good way up the hill and even though power was off, we still had water and gas.

What do you do when there is no electricity (therefore no TV, Wii or internet)? You get a lot of cleaning done in the house, you play Boggle and you walk and ride out to Coronation Drive in the early morning, after lunch and after dinner. We did this everyday from Tuesday to Friday. Coronation drive is one of the main roads leading to the CBD and right next to the Brisbane River.

We weren't the only ones out and about. All the people that had remained in the area were out there and we finally got to meet some of our neighbors. Without the TV and no easy access to a radio (we had to go sit in the car to listen to the news every so often), people were talking to each other and sharing information about what was going on. There was constant coverage of the flood but the people in it didn’t get to watch any of it and we had to keep asking the police or firemen what was happening, what they were planning, where the water levels were up to and where they were expected to reach.

So for today, I’ll share some of the photos from our daily ‘patrols’.

Wednesday morning on Coronation Drive:


Thursday morning (4.46am) view of the city from Coronation Drive. We heard that the peak of the flood was going to be at 4am on Thursday so my brother, Adrian and I got up and went for a walk.


Thursday morning view of the turn off from Coronation Drive that we take to get home. If you look on the left, the four white parking signs will give you an idea of the depth of the water. 0765



Thursday afternoon on Coronation Drive:




Thursday afternoon in Milton:

We haven't got our own internet back yet and I'm now using a borrowed pre-paid mobile broadband. More to come tomorrow if we get our own internet back.