Rain and chaos

It’s rain season here at the moment but we were blessed with mainly sunshine and great weather for a long time. A week ago it changed. On Saturday evening it started raining, and I mean really rain. It was like someone was pouring buckets of water on you, no sign of light rain. I walked at hostel’s car park ankle deep in the water in the evening. And the rain didn’t stop. At night you were able to hear the rain falling heavily on the roof. On Sunday morning when I got up the rain was as heavy as it had been all the time. Tiny harmless creek we have on the other side of the road from the hostel was just rising and already flooding to a side road. The rain was so heavy that it rained in through open doors even though we have a couple of metres of cover in front of the door! Driving to the bus stop at 7am in the morning was a nightmare: I could drive about 30ks an hour and some roads were really full of water, I just tried to go through the safest option with hardly any hills.

Around 9am the rain stopped. The rain, strong winds, high tides and big waves did its damage to the town. But we were lucky here. No one died and damage to the properties wasn’t massive in this town. But the storm that started up north in Queensland and made it way down along the coast damaged large areas in many places. Maryborough is about 35ks from us flooded fairly badly. Burrum Heads which is about 35ks from us was hit by a tornado. Bundaberg about 130ks north from here flooded in a bad way and it’s still isolated. In Rockhampton the river was still rising this morning. Whole farms been washed away with the floods. Thousands of people lost their homes in the floods. In Bundaberg a whole house floated about 200 metres with the flood waters.

The biggest nuisance for all travellers has been the fact that all the buses stopped operating on Sunday last week. All the roads getting out of Hervey Bay flooded. The highway was closed at several places due to floods. So there was no way in or out of Hervey Bay. On Thursday the buses started going down to Brisbane with restricted services but nothing north of Hervey Bay. Today the first lucky ones will be able to travel north to Agnes Water but that’s as far as you can get at the moment. Bundaberg is still isolated and the highway is closed in Rocky. No one knows when the buses start going north, they are hoping on Tuesday but no one knows for sure. Those who really had to get to Airlie Beach up north ended up flying up there via Brisbane. Some people paid $400 to fly from Hervey Bay to Brisbane. One couple paid $1200 to fly from Hervey Bay to Proserpine.





North of Bundaberg a bridge collapsed and floated down the river ripping of a major gas pipe. That is affecting lots of businesses in large area. Here in Hervey Bay many restaurants are closed because they don’t have gas to cook the food. At the hostel we don’t have gas either so we don’t have warm water, luckily the cold water isn’t that cold either and the air is warm anyway. Earlier this week some restaurants were closed because they didn’t have supplies to prepare food. On Wednesday there was even a petrol station closed – there was no petrol.

To put things in perspective: In Finland annual rainfall is around 700mm. Here in Hervey Bay in two days (practically in 15 hours) we got 250mm of rain, in Bundaberg the rainfall in two days was 370mm. So no wonder everything flooded. For people from other countries it seems to be hard to grasp the enormity of the rain and the damage it did. We got sunshine already on Sunday afternoon when the rain had stopped so for some it was hard to understand that damage around us has been bad. Even our beach is badly damaged. Basically all the beach accesses have been closed because the storm ripped off a few metres off the beach and now there’s about two metre drop to the beach from the beach accesses. A lot of trees have been uprooted due to storm we had and there’s a lot of rubbish on the beach. A couple of cafes that are situated right on the beach have been damaged as well. Here there’s damage but it’s small compared to the towns where houses have flooded up to the ceilings. A lot of people volunteered to help other people. Two fathers in Maryborough whom lost everything with their families in the floods took a tinny out and went to help other people to get to dry land from isolated areas. I do respect those people.

The wind and the waves washed away quite a bit of the beach.
Many of the beach accesses have been destroyed.

Uprooted trees are quite hopeless sight.

Not quite the normal sight to enter the beach.

Wonder where this sign is supposed to be, definitely not on the beach.

I was stuck with work for eight days and did some really long days. About 110 hours in 8 days took its toll on me and on Thursday evening I could hardly keep my eyes open anymore. The circumstances were new and unusual for me but I handled it well. Travellers staying here have all thanked me for everything I’ve done for them. And that’s what gave me energy to soldier on through those days. I’m not saying that I didn’t get tired but I did the best I could. I’ve never liked given speeches or speaking in front of many people but I got all people in one room and updated them all at the same time when I had something to update. I broke down once in front of everyone but so what, I’m only human. I’m so thankful that I had a great group of people staying here in the chaos.

The chaos is still not over but at least I got to rest for one day. So now I’m all ready for work again!

 

Even in midst of changed and ruined scenery you can find beauty.