Opinion: 100-year flood hits Brisbane just 11 years after the last

How could we be here again, so soon after the horror of the one-in-100-year flood of just 11 years ago, asks Leisa Scott.

And so it roared to life again, that twisting, writhing brown snake of a river that binds us and breaks our hearts.

As we woke to floodwaters lapping at our steps, or in the homes of loved ones who’d taken us in, bedraggled and bereft, the disbelief didn’t ­dissipate, it grew.

How could we be here again, so soon after the horror of the one-in-100-year flood of just 11 years ago?

Oskar Houghton, 9, wades through water near his home in West End. Picture: Annette Dew

So much was the same as 2011 – the macabre spectator sport of watching boats still tethered to their pontoons ­hurtling down the muddy, swollen Brisbane River, the Rosalie shopping district under water, the road closures, the pain.

We even had an updated version of the concrete walkway that threatened to smash into the Gateway Bridge, only this time it was a 30m crane on a barge that could damage the Story Bridge and topple into the apartments that lined the riverbank.

David Miller drives his boat in a flooded street in Auchenflower. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Dan Peled

But so much was different. The Brisbane flood of 2011 happened on a bright and sunny day, the culmination of weeks and weeks of rain in far-flung catchments making its way to the river and over the flood plain to our doors.

This time it happened over four or five days. Long, long days of rain of Biblical proportions, rain that just did not stop, day or night. Sodden ground could hold no more; local creeks that did not flood in 2011 began to fill and swell before creeping over the banks. It’ll stop soon, won’t it?

Darren Lockyer watching the floodwaters in Rosalie. Picture: Steve Pohlner

We’d check the radar again, and again, and there it sat, a technicolour monster hovering over the South East, malevolent and immovable.

Or was that Vladimir Putin? It was all too surreal. Not only were we grappling with the enormity of this flood disaster, not only were we shell-shocked from two years of living through a pandemic, but we were watching war unfold as the bully Russia invaded Ukraine.

An emotional John McDonald sees his his totally swamped home in Oxley for the first time after floods and rain swamped Brisbane. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen/The Australian

As those lucky enough to get back to their houses began their clean-up Monday, the conversations over mop and broom were as personal as they were global. “Do you want to keep these sodden drawings by the kids? And did you hear that Putin has put his nuclear forces on high alert?”

But we kept at it. Sweeping out the mud, knocking out the gyprock, calling the insurance company, doing meat pie and cream doughnut runs for the friends, family, neighbours, strangers who arrived to help.

Staff work to clean up flood damage at a chemist warehouse at Windsor. Picture: Peter Wallis/Getty Images

We’ll be back at it again this morning, and for weeks to come. The waters will recede, the Mud Army will mobilise, the precious keepsakes and waterlogged couches will be piled on the footpaths and then taken away. That brown, angry river will slip back within the confines of its banks and settle into its languid meanderings. And we will try, again, to reset the rhythm of our lives.