Thank God the biggest natural disaster that took place at Ebb Court this week wasn’t a flooded street but a sunburnt neck

It’s been days since I wrote a blog post. Nearly a week I think. Not because I haven’t felt inspired to write one, but because, well, I haven’t felt inspired to write one about writing. Because of this small flood thing that’s been happening here in Brisbane.

Even if we had had power on for the last three days (which we didn’t) or internet connection (didn’t have that either) I simply couldn’t muster up any willingness to write. I sat down at my computer a couple of times but barely got a sentence out before I had to get up and walk away. It just seemed wrong to be doing something so frivolous when there was a natural disaster of epic proportions taking place on my door step.

The first couple of days I had a good excuse – I was too busy watching the 24/7 flood coverage on TV as the media prepared us for the worst flood since 1974 when half of Brisbane went under. We watched nonchalantly from our couch, sipping our coffee and gloating that we didn’t have a property near the river (surely a 300m walk wouldn’t be considered near!). By Tuesday afternoon, half our street were sandbagging, some had rented removal trucks to move their furniture out, and we started to think that maybe we should start to get a bit concerned, even though we had convinced ourselves we were at least a metre higher than everyone else (I swear, to the naked eye we are, if you just tip your head at an angle just so).

Wednesday morning the flood modelling guru’s were predicting a flood of at least 5.5m. They were calling it a “100 Year Flood Event”. Our house is at 5.8m above the river level. At this stage we got to thinking maybe we had been a little bit too nonchalant and started moving everything upstairs to the second level. Just in case, you know. There is definitely something to be said for ‘inciting thy neighbours’ – the more concerned our neighbours became, the more we wondered if we needed to duck out to Bunnings to buy a canoe. I started hourly treks down to the river to check the situation and report back to Tyrrell Central Command. It was these hourly treks that resulted in the worst natural disaster to befall me, thank goodness – a horribly sunburnt neck and arms. Yes, I look like I am wearing a permanent white T-Shirt.

As it neared high tide at 3pm, people gathered in parks and streets all along the river to watch and talk with strangers about the incoming tide, “Where do you live?” replacing “How are you?”. We met more neighbours in six hours than we had in the last six years. By the time high tide passed at 3pm and we realised Bulimba was not going to be too badly affected, it almost felt like a community fun day down by the river with ladies swanning around with glasses of wine and men comparing their sandbag fortresses, only stopping to do a bit of debris spotting – “Oooh, look, a speedboat tied to a pontoon!”, “Is that half a tennis court?”, “There goes Oxley’s floating restaurant!” and “Is that a rain tank?”.

I bumped into a friend of mine, Matt, who lives just around the corner. People in the street were calling Matt’s house the Christmas present because he had wrapped it up so tightly in black plastic and 500 sand bags. Even ripped up the carpet, not taking any chances. When I saw Matt drinking a beer in the park that afternoon, he whispered to me “I just want the sandbags to get a little bit wet, to just lap at the bottom”. Mostly to justify the bollocking he was copping from his mates. I could totally understand.

It felt less festive after the sun went down and we realised most of Bulimba seemed to have self-evacuated to somewhere with power and well above the flood zone. We lit the BBQ and got out the camping torches, listening to the news on ABC Radio National. The guy behind us invited a few of his mates over and cranked up a generator well into the night. I wasn’t sure if I hated him more for his lighting or the bloody noise. We went to bed early, wondering what the high tide at 4am would bring.

We set the alarm for 2:30am, just in case further furniture evacuations were necessary from the ground floor. I went out onto the front balcony with trepidation, to be met by a very, very dry street. After all the anticipation, I will sheepishly admit to almost feeling ripped off. I got the torch and went and checked the drains – lapping at the top but not spilling over. Mum and I walked down to the river, through all the darkened houses shielded by sandbags. It had come well over the boardwalk but was not going to flood any homes down there. Compared to the festivities of the afternoon, we only bumped into maybe a dozen people on the street, some on foot, some on bike, all with torches looking into drains. It became the Bulimba 100 Year Non-Event, thank God. Walking home, we thought about going around to Matt’s house and throwing a few buckets of water on his sandbags. Just enough to get them wet.

Unfortunately not everyone in Bulimba fared so well – it wasn’t the river overflowing that was the problem in the end, but the stormwater drains in the low lying streets.  And many, many others in suburbs across Brisbane fared even worse than this. In comparison, we have only been mildly inconvenienced by three nights without TV and hot water.

On Friday afternoon I took a drive over to Paddington to check out my property in Red Hill after all that rain. Drove down Latrobe Terrace, saw people in coffee shops drinking lattes and ladies getting their hair cut in salons. Life was going on, yet 500m down the road in Rosalie people were shovelling mud out of their homes and businesses. It just felt all wrong.

I have often wondered about survivor guilt – what it would be like to survive if you were in a situation when many others perished. With the retreat of the flood waters, comes a new kind of survivor guilt – the flood survivor kind. When I have tried to sit down at my computer and write, I have simply felt too guilty. Felt that I should be out there shovelling mud and washing walls.  So yesterday I abandoned my computer with its two hour battery life, went down to Bunnings, stocked up with supplies and attempted to drive over to a friend’s house in Chelmer to help. To quote from Pretty Woman “Big Mistake. Huge.” After an hour and a half in a traffic jam and not getting much further than Ipswich Road, I turned around and came home. Registered on the volunteers website – as Can Do Campbell, our Lord Mayor, says, this is going to be a marathon, not a sprint. I am sure I can appease my flood survivor guilt soon - perhaps during the week when the rubber neckers are safely ensconced back at work and the roads have cleared up. Until then, back to the keyboard for me – flood procrastination no more.