after the flood...comes Salvation saturday.

We lit candles for all thsoe who died in the recent floods this week this morning.
the sun came out after the river peaked. a rare quiet moment in the front yard early one morning. I even saw a most wonderful rainbow one day, when was out in the car. I smiled when I saw it, as it was very easy to imagine I was on an ark!
The park after the flood this morning. The water has receded back into the river and the mud from the Lockyer valley continues to flow down the river and settle in Moreton Bay.


Cara, another Brisbane blogger usually posts remarkable images of the River City on her blog Brisbane City Daily Photo and more recently on Thursday, A River Runs Through It. A look at the devastation in her street. She also has some other Brisbane blogs recorded on her sidebar where you will find other first hand accounts of the floods also. One of them, Your Brisbane Past and Present is a fairly true account of what is happening throughout the city at the moment for many many people.

I hope some of these links will be helpful for some of you who would like to see a more comprehensive coverage than I am able to provide here. We are told to stay off the streets, and out of the flood affected areas, and so the local park is the only area I feel able to photograph at this stage. And certainly there is no need to do so really, with the extensive coverage given to it by the media, (many helicopters overhead) and people right in the thick of it themselves, like Cara. Not that they will be having too much time for photos if there houses are flooded.


They are calling today Salvation Saturday. Thousands of volunteers all over the city are gathering twice a day in their sensible protective clothes, and with the brooms or shovels or high pressure hoses to help out in the massive clean up effort here in Brisbane City. The river city as they have been calling it lately! The volunteers are being bussed out to the worst hit suburbs where people are needing help cleaning up their houses, streets, and suburbs.
The Lord Mayor said if you couldn't decide whether to go out in the morning or the afternoon shift, then toss a coin. heads go in the morning, tails, the afternoon!

Some people are down at the mouth of the river trying to clean off the massive debris that has floated down the river and lines the banks of the river.. Large chunks of concrete floating river walkways broke off during the height of the flood and were observed causing havoc on their way down the river. The hero in the story was MAVIS the TUG boat. Two tugs in fact saved the city from further disaster by channeling these massive chunks of concrete past the various bridge supports as they went down the fast flowing dangerously flooded river. The huge Gateway Motorway Bridges were closed three times when these events happened throughout the night. Very scary stuff.
The Moggill Ferry was threatening to come adrift also that night, and the army had to helicopter a massive anchor in in the middle of the night to secure it! A floating restaurant was destroyed as it came untethered also, and floated off down the river and sank, or is it resting against something.
So many stories, so much to think about. There have been spectacular pictures of these events from the helicopter tv coverage, most of which I missed while our power was out for a couple of days. I did see limited images on my abc news website whenever I could get to plug my laptop into power, at a friend's place or at the church. In fact I saw most of my first spectacular images when power was restored, from the tv coverage of the world wide media interest, on a clip from a Chinese news broadcast!


The Queensland State Government has launched an appeal for funds to help the flood victims, if you are interested in doing so.


Thanks so much for your thoughts and prayers at this time. They would be greatly appreciated by those who are directly or indirectly affected by this enormous destruction.

I enjoyed talking to my little grandchildren down south this morning who rang me. They were up late last night after bedtime watching the floods on tv with Daddy last night and were eager to tell me what they saw. I was able to let them hear the helicopter that happened to be flying over my house at the time, and tell them that it was taking the photos for them to watch. Then I had to shut the door and window so I could hear what they were talking about! My son sent this little snippet from his blog about their reactions in an email this morning:

The kids have already been to bed but somehow are in Dad's lap on the couch watching the aftermath of Brisbane Flood Day 2011 on TV. The camera is slowly sweeping across a flooded wasteland somewhere in south-east Queensland. Suddenly there are the distinctive golden arches and familiar "McDonald's" lettering and roofline peeking forlornly out of the water, with maybe a hint of some play equipment.

There is a collective sigh.
Now they've got it.

(comments from the 4 year old twins):

M: "Dad, Is that MY McDonald's?"

R: (helpful tone): "No Mim, your McDonald's isn't in Queensland.."