Weather extremes nothing new in the north
THE Ancient Mariner mourned “water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink”.
He was not sitting on top of Castle Hill looking out to sea. Spending four hours a week holding a hose to water the garden, Townsville people must wonder it will ever rain. History tells us that it will – eventually. It has all happened before. Writing to his brother in 1866, Mark Watt Reid, one of the first settlers in the district, at Woodstock, described country devoid of a blade of grass.
In March 1867, the first cyclone struck, leaving the new road to the goldfield impassable, and unroofing the Eureka Hotel at the top of Hervey Range.
Three years later, another arrived bringing wind and floods. That saw the end of the Towns and Black plantation, and the end of the boil- ing down works. So it continued through the 1870s – dust and shortage of water during the dry season; driving wind, thunder, lightning, and flooding rain in the wet. In 1878, the old hospital on Magazine Island was partly demolished, and patients had to be removed to the Immigration Barracks nearby.
In a way, that may have been regarded as a blessing, because the Government was then forced to build a new and stronger hospital at North Ward.
By the 1880s, old hands in the north were inured to the vagaries of the climate. Most years from January to April, newspapers carried reports of flood damage at Townsville. In February 1890 a terrific thunder storm delivered three inches of rain in three hours, but worse was to come within a few weeks, when another storm resulted in part of the breakwater that sheltered the new harbour being swept away.
Two years later, another downpour caused flooding in Fryer St that swept the Catholic Church away. Then, in 1896 Cyclone Sigma caused even worse damage.
Even worse was to come with the new century. In March 1903, Cyclone Leonta brought not only severe damage to property, but also, according to newspaper reports, dumped seven inches of rain in 20 hours. Fortunately, no storms of the severity of Leonta struck over the next several years, but the history of storm and flood continued.
In 1940, a long period of drought in the late 1930s was broken by a cyclone and floods. This occurred again in 1944, and in 1946 Ross River broke its banks, flooding through Hermit Park.
As a child I recall a motor boat travelling along Charters Towers Rd at the height of the flood, and water rising under my parents’ highset house until it lapped the bearers.
Since that time, the Ross River Dam has been built, and other measures taken to avoid repetition of such extreme flooding.
It did not stop the horrendous floods resulting from the ‘ Night of Noah’ in 1998. It should be a grim warning to those who ignore the Townsville City Council’s advice to prepare for a possible cyclone – even if it does not look like rain now, it is guaranteed to come.