Annie's Blog

My entry for Donna's photo competition comes from a trip to Toowoomba for a visit last weekend. On the way to and from I enjoy checking out how College's crossing (west of Brisbane), is going after it was almost all  washed away in the big floods from a few years ago. The structures are coming back, not quite so many yet, but a little cafe, toilet facilities, of course the river is the main attraction, especially popular on a warm weekend like last.  One more less spectacular  photo below, gives the explanation for the name of the area, a place very near where my grandmother was born up along the river a little, and around the same era. Maybe that is why I am often drawn to this place and its history. Many thanks to Donna from Cottage Days and Journeys for hosting this little competition to which some of us look forward, even though sometimes I have, like today, used a photo from my cell phone.... all I had on hand when I actually stopped to make a phone call to ...

I went for a drive down to the bottom of my street, hoping to find a nice wattle flowering that I could take a photo...but I didn't find one, instead I found this...all up and down the river, people are having their jetties replaced, after having them all swept away in the floods at the beginning of last year... and there was also this...an abandoned house... was going to be large and extravagant in its day now just crumbling away, and even the house out the back too... what a shame....not often to be seen so close to other nice places in nice suburbs... very strange indeed....

Had the wonderful fun of accompanying a little grandson on the city cat along the river leaving Southbank where we had found a playground, eaten an icecream, but didn't swim at the little beach, because of a bad cough past the Performing Arts Centre and the Museum, Art Gallery and State library complex..all newly renovated after the big flood...guess some of those roof gardens didn't need watering for a long while under one of the many bridges...I never know their names, I'm sorry past this funny little structure near a factory on the other bank and an old lighthouse and coming up past the Regatta Hotel loved the historical picture of the very first cross river ferry...where people had to jump into the rowing boat whatever the level of the river... another City Cat arrives the finish line for the famous Regatta races they had every year...wonder do they still hold them, thought they shifted out to somewhere else once? and walked past the old Toowong library where I took so...

there was a Christmas tennis breakup...on the river all sorts of craft were seen out the city cat ferries were regular occurrences...good to see them back in operation the agapanthus and frangipani and poinciana served as Christmas decorations where we sat for our lunch on the riverbank would have been under water by a few meters during the flood yummy food and good company and coffee a very pleasant time on the riverbank of the mighty Brisbane River...good to see that somethings are looking like they are getting back to normal. Remembering of course that there are many others that are not yet, after the mighty floods at the beginning of the year.

Last weekend I was in Toowoomba, on my way home from church on Sunday, I took a little drive through the center of town where the events of January10 were to prove disastrous flooding in these streets and normal little waterways... claiming lives, and cars in the inland tsunami there It was all so unbelievable, I am still trying to get it all sorted out in my mind where it all happened... this mild looking creek was to cause the worst devastation and loss of life as it could no longer cope with the copious amounts of runoff coming down the mountain, and roared through the sleepy little towns of Murphy;s creek, Spring Bluff, Helidon, and the badly devastated little township of Grantham and from this very high vantage spot a humble little cactus and the Brisbane river below showing the flood marks from weeks before and this flimsy fence was all that stopped me from tumbling over the edge of the very high bank of the river...glad I don't live here to worry about kids and grandchildre...