Queensland Floods of 2011

It's been a devastating week for a lot of Queenslanders with flooding taking many lives and destroying homes and properties across many areas of the state. I managed to get out on Tuesday night for a quick drive before dark to take a few photos from around our local area.

Our first stop was the Eatons Hill bridge over the South Pine River on Old Northern Road. You can see the water line had dropped over a metre in the water lines on the supports by the time we took this shot , but it was still very high compared to normal.

The water line is normally the other side of that row of trees and if you look closely, you can see the mud right on the top of the posts in the foreground, so it's obvious where I was standing was under water too.

Here's a wide shot from Old Northern Road ... the South Pine River is actually over to the left of this picture, NOT directly in front. You shouldn't be able to see the water from here. The road below us was completely covered too.

We turned around at Albany Creek and thought we'd have a look at Strathpine, but with Gympie Road blocked, we worked our way around and over the railway line to Leis Parade to see if we could see back to Gympie Road from there ... no chance!

Looking from Leis Parade over Leis Park, you can see the North Pine River has risen was very close to the train line. Keep in mind, waters had receded a metre or so by the time we got here.

The park itself had completely vanished and here you can just see the top of one of the picnic pergolas roofs, peeking from under the water. The river is way the other side of that roof.

Leis Parade simply vanished under the flood waters. This road actually does a loop under the railway bridge and as you can see, was completely under water.

Another shot of what is normally a beautiful park by the North Pine River. The bank of the river is normally the other side of those big trees out in the middle of this photo.

Gympie Road was closed, so we couldn't continue north to Petrie and had to turn around, going back through Strathpine towards Brendale. We couldn't quite get to see the water over the bridge as emergency crews had the road blocked.

We continued on Gympie Road toward the highway and stopped just prior to Pine Rivers Park. There were huge areas are covered by water on the northern side of the road all around Pine Rivers Park, everywhere you look is just mud, sludge, debris and rubbish ... floating.

Here's a view of Pine Rivers Park, which is usually a beautiful, well appointed park, with family areas, bike riding areas and a monorail for the kids. Now it looks like a lake.

The entrance to Pine Rivers Park just vanished into the mud, but the sign was still out of the water to let us know where we were. Again ... muddy water everywhere you look.

We zipped back over the Kremzow Road overpass and down Southpine Road in Brendale to Linkfield Road, heading back towards the highway at Carseldine.

Although there were a couple of nice photo opportunities, it's a shame that such tragic circumstances are the reason they're possible. We used the headlights of the truck to light up the grass in the foreground.

We were losing light fast and stopped at the entrance to JAB Gravel and Earthworks to take a few shots of the vast water table covering everything in sight. The light across the ground was again provided by the headlights on the truck.

Thanks for visiting our Blog.
Darren Gardiner

See these and other photos on our Picasa Web Albums at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/styleid