Wowsers!! What a crazy 24 hours in Queensland!
Rains and winds from the ex-tropical cyclone Oswald have battered the state, causing widespread flooding and damage. You can read full details on the news sites like news.com.au, which also has a pretty good gallery full of images.
Sadly it seems as though there are lives that have been lost, and annoyingly there are still people taking risks by driving through floodwaters. Stay out of the water people!!
Thankfully I have no incidents to report of. Where I live there's been no damage other than a few dead palms branches falling off (collected and stockpiled today), all of my family are healthy and accounted for, and my dog got spoiled by being allowed to spend the night inside in the garage. We have had power as well, which quite a few friends and family haven't been so lucky. I bet Bunnings are doing a roaring trade with generators today!
I took a couple of videos from around around my town yesterday, one of them being the massive foam “winter wonderland” covering Mooloolaba and Alexandra Headlands. Courtesy of iMovie for the iPhone I've combined them and included it below. They had already closed the road at Alex by the time I got there to take a look (it was 3m high in some points!) but drove through the carpark in Mooloolaba where it was still passable.
I've also put in footage from my old place where I briefly visited yesterday, where the canal pretty high! The wind and the waves in the canal were ridiculous, and one of the boats kept breaking its mooring. It glanced off one boat, and looked like it was going to take another before some fellas from the house a couple doors down managed to rope it and tie it to their pier. It was still in danger of hitting their boat though, so when the owner finally appeared he jumped on and then tried to drive the boat up the river to moor it somewhere else and away from the bridges. He was really struggling thoug, and it looked like the anchor had been caught on something which left the boat in a really dangerous spot. In the end, my old neighbour jumped into his tinnie, drove up to the boat and climbed on (nervous moment) then helped the owner navigate the boat to my old neighbours pontoon. There they secured it to ride out the rest of the weather. Pretty awesome work by my old neighbour!
For now everyone is sitting tight to see what will happen in the next 24 hours as all the water from the hinterland flows down towards the coast and towards Brisbane CBD.
I'm having flashbacks to the floods of 2011, and if it is, I will be jumping in a car and heading down to Brisbane to assist in the clean up.
Stay safe everyone!