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A FED-UP Garbutt couple was forced to dig makeshift trenches when their garden was under threat of turning into a swimming pool.
Henriette Lategan and her husband Gunston bought their Garbutt home just after the February floods last year and have not encountered much rain in the last 11 months.
The house is located in the industrial area of the suburb and shares a fence line with an abandoned industrial building.
Mr Lategan watched on from the couple’s loungeroom window during the recent rain as their garden started filling up with water that was overflowing from the drain next door.
He was forced to dig a 6m trench along the fence line of the industrial building and dig smaller trenches in their yard in the rain to stop their house from flooding.
The water was estimated by Mr Lategan to be 10cm deep.
Ms Lategan said the industrial building’s poor drainage and broken gutters had resulted in the river of water in their yard.
“We had to go and dig trenches two weeks ago when it started raining because the factory gutters are blocked and the water flows into our garden,” she said.
“If my husband wasn’t home the day it happened, we would have had flooding at the bottom of the house.”
Ms Lategan has phoned the managing real estate agent of the next door building, Colliers International Townsville, to plead with them to fix the drainage issues. Colliers International have been liaising with Mr and Ms Lategan and have sought three quotes to fix the drainage issue.
The makeshift trenches with stagnant water have become the perfect breeding ground for toads and mosquitoes with “plague” like numbers inundating the garden.
Ms Lategan said after the rain she woke to “hundreds and hundreds” of baby toads jumping around her front and back gardens. She owns two dogs and has been scared for their lives in case they ate the pest.
Ms Lategan said she had gone to extreme lengths to control the new residents in her garden.
“As you walk you see the little baby frogs in the garden and in the street, it is like a plague,” she said. “They were really tiny and since the weekend and we are trying to get the birds to eat them putting wild bird seed around and the ones that are still here have grown a bit to thumbnail size.”