Brisbane Under Water

I walk in the door refreshed from my first yoga class in months.
M greets me with, "Brisbane is under water."
What? Oh no!
"We must call my brother," I say.

But first, M pulls up a video clip on Youtube. "Look at this," he says. "Watch how a small stream in Toowoomba turns into a torrent of water and washes cars away." We watch the clip and share in the lives and agony of strangers.

When the flooding started in Queensland, we tracked the floods on the internet keeping an eye on their proximity to Brisbane. And now the flood waters have reached the city and the swollen Brisbane River will not be contained. The meandering river we had cruised on the Brisbane City Cat was now a raging toxic torrent rising six metres above its banks, flooding the city and its neighbourhoods.

We skype Brisbane. My sister-in-law answers.
"How are you?" we ask. "Are you going to be okay?"
"We're fine," she says. "We're outside of the flood zone. But I'm prepared with an overnight bag for each of us in case we have to be evacuated. As you know, we're only 20 minutes from the city."

My brother is still at work in Brisbane and she's hoping that he can get home considering that some of the bridges are being shut down.
"When he went to work this morning he called to say that SouthBank was already under water," she says.

Southbank - beautiful lovely Southbank! When M and I visited Australia, Southbank impressed us. "We could live here," we both said, man-made as it is. We loved the beaches that had been created along the banks of the Brisbane River and the swimming pools set back from the beach. The palm trees, the restaurants and cafés, the bougainvillea lined paths and the view of the city across the river enticed us. On my brother's birthday, we had enjoyed lunch there on the shaded patio of a Greek restaurant.

We commiserate with my sister-in-law about the awfulness of it all and send love across cyberspace. Relieved that they are fine, back on the internet, we follow the difficult stories of other lives impacted by the floods. In amongst the tragedy, I find this nugget of Aussie straightforwardness: the mayor of Ipswich warns would-be looters that anyone found looting in their city will be used as tide-markers.

Good for him! Sometimes, especially at times like these, we've just got to say it as it is.