Bundaberg Floods – by Gary

Some of you may recall my entry on the severe Bundaberg floods of 2010.  These floods inconveniently curtailed my Christmas visit to Adelaide, forcing me to hurriedly return to Kallisto to look after her.  Remarkably, just 2 years later Bundaberg experienced even worse floods when Cyclone Oswald brought torrential rain to southern Queensland, causing the Burnett River to again burst its banks.  

Returning once again to Bundaberg, this time in Mojombo, and cruising the Burnett from mouth to town centre, a distance of some 10km, we were shocked to see the amount of damage so indelibly visited upon the banks by these two events.  Great swathes of vegetation have been laid waste, severe erosion can be seen in places and a considerable amount of property damage is still evident.  What really captured our attention was a set of markers attached to a building, indicating just how much worse the 2013 flood was.

The 2013 flood level was about 1.5 metres higher than in 2010 – when you spread that out across the entire flood plain that's an astonishing amount of additional water!!!!

The 2013 flood was the worst in recorded history, it was 7.34 metres above the high tide level, and as I said, came just three years after the bad floods of 2010.  Global warming strikes again???  I was intrigued, so did a little rummage through the internet on the topic.  And came up with a fascinating find - a graph of peak flood levels since the beginning of records (not that long ago) prepared by our very own Met Bureau (they wouldn't lie would they!?).

Marvelous what you can find on the web!!

As the graph shows, the Burnett floods reasonably regularly, and ok, the 2013 flood was a record – but not by all that much.  Considering how much development now crowds the banks I wouldn't have thought a modest increase was hardly a cause for surprise  But here is the real surprise, a major flood occurred in 1890, followed by another major flood just three years later in 1893!  Hows that for a coincidence.  And get this, the 1893 floods were actually two floods, spaced just two weeks apart!

One thing I still wonder about though is whether the environmental damage to the river was similar in those earlier floods, or whether perhaps the bank ecology is now more fragile.  I suspect it is.

Damage to mangroves is astonishing in places.  Regrowth is occurring, but basically from scratch.

Bank erosion is severe in places.

Some of the cane fields look a might smaller.

So much of the bank vegetation has simply died or been swept away!

Asset damage in the the 2013 floods must have been severe.  For instance the Midtown Marina complex, which prior to the 2010 flood was quite extensive, has not recovered – it has simply ceased to exist.

Going up the river to Bundaberg in Kallisto prior to the 2010 flood we were charmed by the natural beauty of the scenery.  It seems recapturing that experience may take some time!

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