Qld floods 2022: Some Qld sporting clubs now uninsurable

Thousands of Queensland sportspeople are among victims of last year’s floods as their clubs are deemed uninsurable.

Despite their attempts to become flood-resilient, South East Queensland sporting clubs are being told they are no longer insurable and are now refinancing as they work out how to keep afloat and protect their venues ahead of the next severe weather event.

The Gympie Netball Club, which was inundated with 20m of water during last year’s floods, remains the only netball association not back up and running in Queensland, while the Brisbane Women’s Hockey Association – home to more than 3000 members – is now facing a daunting future with zero insurance options.

“The thing I struggle with over the last 12 months is that the goalpost keeps changing,” Gympie Netball Club president Colleen Miller said.

“We didn’t have flood insurance; it’s too expensive for us in a flood zone, but council had some flood insurance and given that we leased the premises off council, certainly the court surfaces didn’t come under that.

“We had two scenarios: a patch job, which if another flood came through would last maybe a couple of years or you could do a proper job that would hold up and that would cost around the half-a-million mark.

“We were told council would fund it but they rediverted that pool of funding, then we put in an application with sporting recreation for disaster funding and got half the money needed and now were in for phase two of disaster funding and waiting.”

Pine Hills Hockey Club’s Taryn Anno at the Windsor fields. Picture: David Clark

Netball is by far the most popular sport in Gympie, with the club usually home to 500 members.

The flood event occurred the day before the 2022 season was due to start, and players were relocated to local schools who donated their courts to the club for the year.

Ms Miller now hopes works will be complete by the 2025 season.

“The clubhouse was a write off, but that was the least of our concerns … we would have run out of a gazebo, no courts, no play,” she said.

“We’ve relied on the generosity of the public, and they’ve been amazing … but looking at the landscape, this council seriously needs to look at relocating and planning for a more concrete future because floods are just going to rip these sporting venues apart every time.

“It has been an extremely hard, tumultuous year trying to answer questions that you just don’t know the answers to and now we’ve been told after that flood event, you would never get insurance to cover that venue.”

Brisbane Women’s Hockey Association president Kath Proctor was delivered the same news – no more insurance.

While the association is back on its feet after enduring $350,000 worth of flood damage, it was only thanks to their former insurer, and now Ms Proctor is faced with the challenge of future proofing the venue for the 17 clubs and 3500 members who rely on it.

Flood damage at the Downey Park canteen

“Our insurance brokers tried everybody and no one would cover us. We were told all fields in South East Queensland weren’t likely to get food cover ever again,” she said.

“Yes, this year we had a big claim, but we’ve been paying excess of up to $30,000 a year for insurance and haven’t made a flood claim since 2009, so they’ve had a lot of money going in.

“Sporting fields are usually on flood plains because they cant build houses on it and yes, it’s a good catchment but we need protection for the infrastructure so our communities can still use them, so we’ve asked council whether we can start a funding pool with others in the same position.”

Ms Proctor said she was gutted at the insurance news, as the association was extremely proactive in their flood resilient measures.

“We’d done a lot of work to make ourselves as flood resilient as we could; fridges and freezers had motors on the top of them, stainless steel on the ground floor, everything we thought humanly possible and still this flood wiped us,” she said.

“We lost a brand-new golf buggy and mower, line makers, you name it, water went through it all. It was devastating the amount of damage,

“It was three weeks until you could walk on the fields, there was that much water on them couldn’t even drain it off.

“When you’re trying to be responsible in managing your own affairs, to not be able to get flood insurance is quite devastating. You get the jitters every time it rains.”

The 2022 February flood disaster that hit southern Queensland and northern NSW was the costliest weather event in Australian history, and the second costliest globally in 2022.

Gallery: Brisbane flood destruction from the air

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