The history of floods on our mighty coastal rivers.

Axle, it doesn't need a big flood to wash you away. In the early 1930's, my old man was working on stations in the Murchison.
A group of blokes, including him, were travelling from one station to another in the floodplain area of the upper reaches of the Gascoyne River, during mid-Summer.

They had a 4 cyl Chev and a Dodge piled up with gear and they stopped to make camp for the night in a nice substantial, beautifully treed creekbed.
The creek would have been one of the Gascoynes tributaries. One of the blokes was an old experienced "bushie" - and despite this, he and the rest all decided to spread their swags out in the nice soft sand of the creek bed. It was a fine clear Summer night.

The old man was woken by the old bushie shaking his shoulder about 2:00AM.
The old bushie said, "I've seen a lot of lightning in the inland in the last couple of hours. I think we should move right out of the creek bed and up onto high ground.

All the blokes were woken and all the swags and cars and gear were moved up onto high ground above the creek channel.
They were just readying to bed back down again, when they heard some noise. They all walked over to the edge of the channel just in time to see a solid wall of water rolling down the creek about 4' (1.2M) high. The wall of water was nearly the full width of the creek.

They stood and watched in awe as the water rushed past and slowly increased in depth. They all turned in, and when they rose in the morning, the creek was running a "banker"!

The old man said the sky was clear for virtually as far as they could see, all night, all around them - and they would have all been drowned and washed out to sea, if the old fella hadn't been alert and wised-up to the sudden onset of flash floods caused by big thunderstorms in the outback.

Cheers, Ron.

Hi Axle,

I have been in awe of some of the floods in recent history in that area and further north. Having camped in parts of North Queensland and Remote areas of the New England Tablelands in some big rains in the 70s and 80s I know how dangerous flash floods can be.

Actually raced one from Panhandle Ck and Robard Ck area (Between Proserpine and Collinsville) to the Bogie River at Binbee Qld back in the early 80s on an old XL500 trail bike with my wife on the back - some crossings were dry others were rising and one was about to be hit with a wall of water - literally had to drag the bike through one crossing with rope and ride over an old eroded culvert about 6" wide to ensure we got out to the main road before the main body of water closed the track completely.

We had been camping and could hear thunder all around us that night but no rain - had a gut feeling we should skip the morning coffee and hightail it outta there - only just made it out, we had water lapping our heels all the way - just like in the movies...

So lucky that residential properties built recently on flood plains have not had a major disaster. I imagine that it is only a matter of time.
Having lived in Qld for most of my early life and expreienced real torrentiol rainfall in areas where there were few people and no weather stations to record it. I would never buy property that was not on a hill or some sort of elevated position.

Many places in SE Qld deemed to be too wet and swampy in the 40s 50s and 60s are now prime real estate. Previously flood prone land became a goldmine for developers since the rain dried up in the 50s. (deforestation??)

Its hard to imagine but further North up at Springvale Homestead near Katherine NT I was amazed to see flood stranded Logs sitting in trees 10 or more metres above the homestead grounds. The then manager (my brother) showed us a screwdriver hammered into the top of a tree during a flood in the 1980s. The amazing thing about this is that you are standing on a massive flat plain not a gully or valley. It is hard to comprehend the volume of water that must flow down Katherine Gorge during some extreme wet seasons. Reports of 4200mm of rain in 4 days have been scoffed at with people saying - it must be an error and the figure was most likely 420mm in 4 days... go figure.

Also at Monsidale Creek near Linville Qld there is still evidence of the magnitude of the 74 Floods Logs and trees caught up in trees hundreds of metres from the actual creek. I cannnot imagine how deep it was at the time.

I also have verbal reports from farmers in the area who reported to, I think it was SEQEB at the time, that power transmission towers had gone under water - only to be told by the authority that that was impossible. Yeah right ..and "here is the photo", said the farmer... oops - so much for hydrological engineers and their educated estimations based on recent records.

In August 2007 at Coops Corner behind Rainbow Beach 1130mm of rain fell in a 24 hour period the heaviest fall in 1 hour was 297mm this was recorded at station 540209 but because it was an automated station and personnell were unable to get to the site to confirm the data - it was not given status of an official record. (Indigo Jones on 2 February 1893 recorded the highest official daily rainfall in Australia 35.71 inches (or 907 mm) at Crohamhurst near Peachester Qld). I was one of the first people to get to the Coops Corner site after the flood receded.
I took this photo of the inside of the pump house which was located well above all previous flood heights



The interesting thing about this is - although we discourage people from camping on flood prone camping areas and creek banks the local council happily allowed homes to be built on flood plains between 40 and 80 km away from this rain event and 30km and just over a small range from Indigo Jones's recorded event.

The whole east coast has experienced massive floods in the past who knows when or if they will return.

Flash flood, in the upper hunter region NSW

Gday Axle
One afternoon we were well into finishing hard facing a crusher and a few drops of rain came down on us. I told the boys to pack up and get ready to leave as if we left it to late we wouldn't be able to get across the river . Sure enough, when we arrived at the river there were 10 other cars full of men waiting to go across as the river was running too deep and fast. Up until this point we had really not had rain and all around was still dry..West of Makay 1982. Back to camp for a shower,a feed,and a wait.

Hi Axle,
I live on the Hastings catchment which feeds into Port Macquarie, just up the road aways from where you were working, more or less. But the next river north of here is the Macleay and there are some harrowing stories of floods on that river.

The Macleay has the biggest if not one of the biggest catchments on all of these easterly flowing rivers east of the Great Divide in NSW

In 1949 there was a major flood which nearly washed the town of Kempsey out to see. Many houses were seen floating down stream some with people still on the verandah roofs calling for help as they floated by, never to be seen again, and many more houses were flattened in the town.

There were several extraordinary circumstances which contributed to such a disastrous event.

The first of these was that there had been a heavy snow fall up in the table lands around Uralla and surrounding areas a day or so before. Then there came a heavy downfall of rain across the upper catchment of the Macleay which thawed out the snow and virtually created two rainfall events in one apparently.

This sudden increase in river flows washed many bridges out and scoured the banks and river flats taking all manner of debris downstream such as big floods do.

One of the bridges washed up against the train bridge across the Macleay on the southern edge of the Kempsey Township and started to collect more and more debri as it came down stream. According to one report I heard from an eye witness living at that time right near the bridge, the river height on the upstream side of the train bridges was ten feet higher than it was on the downstream side.

Eventually the river broke through the railway embankment on the northern side of the bridge and the sudden rush of water took many houses and flattened many more. The town was never the same again as evidenced from the before and after photographs I have seen.

Kempsey still gets many floods and the people of Kempsey have learnt to deal with them. It is still one hell of a problem but there is some very crucial early reports from people living on the upper Macleay which generally provide some important early warnings as to river heights. These reports are monitored on a minute by minute basis when it looks like a flood event is immanent.

I am old enough to remember the news reels of the Maitland floods in 56 I think it was. They covered a vast area also and similar scenes can be seen on the Macleay in virtually any flood event there. There is a lot of country that goes under water once the river gets past the town and out onto the flood plain or The Macleay River Delta as I call it.

In full flood the current traffic bridge, built in 1958, which crosses the Macleay into Kempsey, vibrates they tell me.

I don't think there has been a heavy rain event right across the catchment since 1949 and 1963, but if ever they get a severe rain event right across the entire catchment that will be a major flood event also I don't doubt.

The last big flood was in 2001 which isolated the town for a few days and cut the Pacific Highway in several places from Kempsey north to Clybucca.

Cheers, Bruce.

The brissy river hit 8.5 odd metres above the guage twice in the 1800's. 1974 was 5.5, 2011 was 4.5. My dear wife works for the dept of natural resources (now DSITIA) - their drilling and testing of the Brisbane river valley has alluvial deposits out just past 20 metres above the
Make of it what you like, but it is all there on public record. The contour mapping is sobering to look at.

Geoscience Australia is currently pulling together a product called 'water observations from space'. Click on the linkl at http://www.ga.gov.au/scientific-topics/hazards/flood/capabilities/wofs

It contains satellite imagery of surface water over time and may be useful to observe where water has been in the past as a guide to what can happen in places where records are sparse.