Residents trickle back into suburb
Residents of Gold Coast suburb Wongawallan are returning to properties obliterated by severe storms and flooding.
The week-long double whammy disaster – a Christmas night cyclonic storm and New Year’s Day flash floods – wreaked havoc, with locals navigating through fallen trees and debris to see what is left of homes.
Lynnette Lynch returned to what she once called her “paradise lost”, a gorgeous dual property along the Tamborine Creek.
This week it is barely recognisable. Floods washed away her driveway, leaving behind gaping concrete holes.
Torrents destroyed shed and garage foundations, and large rocks once covering the creek bed collected on her lawn.
The water was so strong a car, tractor, fence panels and contents from inside steel sheds were strewn across the property.
Inside, a thick sludge covered floors of her once award-winning home, a black line across the walls showing where knee-high floodwaters seeped in.
Ms Lynch was home when the Christmas Day storms hit, but she said coming home to her flood-ridden property, “I’ve gotten to stage where I’m a bit numb – emotionally I’m drained, physically I’m exhausted, and I’m just sad.
“There’s so much more damage now than just the trees down from the storm. The water has affected everything, every crevice.”
Ms Lynch bunkered in her home during the storms, which sounded like a “row of freight trains,” before escaping with her four orphaned kittens and a Great Dane.
“Our neighbours said the water was running so fast they couldn’t even cross the road to check on us,” she said.
“Neighbours have lived here for 50-odd years and they’d never seen anything like this.”
Asked where she would go from here, she said, “Honestly, I don’t know.”
Like many in Upper Coomera and Wongawallan, she will have to wait for debris to be cleared for a damage assessment to be done.
“The job was massive when it was just the trees, but now I have no idea. After the storm, the fence was still here so the water has just taken absolutely everything.”