Yrae Chronicles

Happy new year belatedly! 2011 is kinda wet! A lot! Less so here cos we're SA and we don't GET rain, but I believe~ Queensland is world news now. Beautiful one day, perfect the next.

I was initially of the opinion that come on, they're Queenslanders, they should be used to flooding and prepared for it. In the last week or so... yeah~ no amount of houses on stilts can prepare for that. Places in Toowoomba flooded to 3m in ten minutes. Just look at your ceilings right now, which I imagine is probably about 3m high. Ten minutes and it's completely underwater. People have found their houses 20km away. Brisbane's started flooding and will be properly hit by the weekend.

I'll admit, the cynical part of me does sneer and roll eyes--South Australia has been in a largely eastern-states-imposed drought for the last decade, due to their bloody rice farms and water hogging and draining of the Murray before it gets to us, and we never saw any 'drought relief' telethons on for that variation of natural disaster--so there is a small part of me that's just pointing and going 'serves you bloody right'. Problem there, of course, is that your average Queenslander isn't a rice farmer. SA is quietly celebrating about the water that'll start FINALLY flowing down to Goolwa and the Lower Lakes over the next three months. We'll celebrate more loudly in three months, though, when it's not quite so crass.

Mostly, though? Good luck, Queensland. There are pictures in there of people kayaking down the flooded rivers, splashing each other in the street, and going 'Look there goes another one!' as cars float past their window. Cos that's what Queenslanders do in a crisis. Make fun of it :D