Brisbane declared a National Disaster Area

On Sunday, 16th November, 2008, the worst storm in 25 years hit the South East Queensland area, decimating The Gap, a suburb in Queensland's capital city, Brisbane, and causing major damage to the Caboolture Shire, just south of the Sunshine Coast.

The Australian Army is out in force today, two days after the disaster, still helping with the clean-up in The Gap, and locals are pitching in wherever possible.

In my little area of Queensland, the other area hit badly by the storm (Caboolture Shire), we have experienced non-stop rain, localised flooding, and blackouts over the past few days, though nothing at all compared to Sunday night at the height of the storm.

From where I was, I experienced something as close to being inside an actual cyclone as you can probably get without actually being there. The newspapers are saying we had winds in excess of 130km/hr, and that we in the Caboolture Shire had 107mm of rain during the storm.

The day started out as a typical Summer day in sunny and hot Queensland. By mid-afternoon it had reached fairly high temperatures and the humidity was simply awful. By four o'clock, the sky was both black AND green at the same time. I don't rightly remember a lot of thunder and lightening, although apparently there were. What I remember the most is the driving rain and the cyclonic winds. I remember watching my Dalmatian struggling to get to me, and failing, being pushed back by severe winds at least three times. Eventually, through will-power alone I think, he made it to the sanctuary of my lounge room where we camped out in relative, if rather dark (the power having gone off shortly after the storm started) safety for the next six or so hours.

Throughout that time, we watched some rather spectacular goings on by Mother Nature outside the windows.

At one stage I couldn't see the houses on either side of me, and they are very close. I couldn't see the train station across the road, and I couldn't see my back fence either. Later on I saw that the two huge Ironbark Gums down behind my yard (but up against my fence) were actually horizontal for while, as the wind was severe. My clothes line is bent where it got hit by a whiplash from one of those trees as well.

The trees at the back of my house snapped in various places as did three of my front trees. Over the next week or so, I'm due to have the tree loppers in to clear up a lot of the damage and remove the trees that have been declared unsafe due to damage.

At one point I looked out my bedroom window and watched my recycle bin being flung around my driveway - actually lifted up and thrown. It landed in my tomato plants. I also looked out the back over my deck when I could actually see beyond my fence and watched the flood approaching. There's a canal down behind me in the paddock (it's called a council easment though), and it flooded easily during the storm. (It's the white strip above the top of my fence in the photo) It never has in the year and a half that I've been here, so it was a bit scary to see that. I also watched the flood in my back yard (already mostly under water) racing down the little hill to meet up with the rapidly rising mini-flood waters, which was happening entirely too quickly for my liking.

This morning (Tuesday) I took a walk down to the back fence and could still see the floodwaters in the canal. We are due for more severe storms this week, and for most of the Summer. Here's hoping this is the worst of them though.