‘All of his memories, all gone’
HEATHER Martin and her siblings grew up in the Rosslea home that her father built and rode through multiple cyclones and flood events but none like this one.
Now her childhood home on Benson St is wrecked, and the family feared bringing their 90-year-old father Maurice to see it would devastate him.
“My dad built this 60 years ago and I’m too afraid to bring him back here,” Ms Martin said.
“Heartbroken, dad loved his garden, he had beautiful gerberas, all gone, all his tools that were so old and he loved them, they’re all gone too.
“It’s very upsetting seeing all this mess, all of his memories. They’re all gone.”
Maurice Martin, a builder by trade, built three highset Queenslanders on the same street and raised his family in one.
The unprecedented floodwaters from Townsville’s one in 500-year-flood rose halfway up the door of the downstairs bathroom, destroying white goods, a golf buggy, and irreplaceable memories.
Ms Martin said she remembers being a little girl during Cyclone Althea.
Dad’s not insured so we’re up s**ts creek. HEATHER MARTIN
“When they built the dam we thought that would save us and it hasn’t,” she said. “It’s just devastating.”
She checked on her father twice on Saturday and on Sunday decided he needed to be evacuated.
“I made him leave. He had been two days without electricity,” she said.
“We floated him out on a kayak and thankfully the army boys were here.”
Ms Martin was heartbroken to see the damage to her childhood home, but said there were people worse off.
“Dad’s not insured so we’re up s**ts creek,” she said. “But all those new homes up there in Idalia, those poor buggers.”