Shelter from the storm
WHERE to start, Townsville?
We are all used to cyclone watch, we stock up on food, move items inside, and study the tracking map. We know the category, wind speeds, and approximate time of impact.
Not so for our blockbuster flood, monitoring the hourly capacity readings of the brilliant Ross River Dam Twitter account was the only definitive data available. Everything else; the warnings, the doorknocking, the suggestions to evacuate, could only tell us to consider moving to higher ground.
Higher than what?
We thought about it, but like most people in Townsville, we have pets.
Not allowed at the first four evacuation centres listed, the idea of leaving them behind … that’s never going to happen.
But when my sister woke up in chest high water, I waded over to help guide her and her pooch to my place (crocodiles crossed my mind but were thankfully elsewhere) we grabbed our mum, and the 4 Regiment lads patrolling our street provided sandbags.
Safe, or so we thought.
The next 24 hours were spent checking if the blue cats-eyes in the centre of the street were still visible. We set half-hourly alarms in case we fell asleep, but although high tides and water releases increased both flooding and anxiety levels, when we heard the dam gates were to be fully opened the next day, in the dark rather than daylight, then everything changed.
Two wetsuit-clad water police parked outside my house just before dark to rescue people.
We then decided to leave while we could see, grabbing dog food and stuffing small bags with random items, including a lastminute grab for a lantern with fairy lights inside.
“Can you take a great dane, a chihuahua, a vision-impaired adult, an elderly lady, and me?”
They said: “We’ll be back for you in an hour.”
But as light was fading fast we decided not to wait, and as two police were later rescued from treetops, in hindsight it was probably a good decision.
We waded out in thigh-high water and pelting rain, the car I’d driven to Rising Sun carpark that morning our safe haven.
It was soaking and cramped but the glow of my ridiculous necessity, the fairy-lit lantern, made the next 14 hours bearable as earthmoving trucks filled with rescued residents rolled in through the night.
Since then, so many things have brought tears. There has been the Three Loaves Bakery gifting bread from their van, the unbelievable kindness of our motel neighbours Robyn and Mick and my physio paying a motel call to iron out my carkinked neck and offer a gurney, countless offers of assistance and accommodation, the big hug from my favourite supermarket staffer.
The presence of 4 Regiment can’t be understated, seeing their skills and equipment in action in our streets is something I wish we didn’t need a natural disaster to witness.
The hours put in by the police, SES and emergency workers, Ergon and Sunwater staff, volunteers, everybody, a massive thank you for your efforts.
It has made a crushing event not only bearable, but beatable.
Thank you, Townsville, you’re simply, absolutely, the best.
CAN YOU TAKE A GREAT DANE, A CHIHUAHUA, A VISION-IMPAIRED ADULT, AN ELDERLY LADY, AND ME?