Welcome to the Queensland Twilight Zone

It’s been a strange couple of days.

A sinkhole

Just up on the coast, about three and a half hours drive to the north, are some popular campsites close to Rainbow Beach. You may remember that Mrs Bob has been there with a friend of hers and the kids, they fed the dolphins.

It’s a popular place to go camping and it would be busier than usual right now, what with it being the spring school holidays. So when a sinkhole the size of a football pitch and about 9 metres deep manufactured itself at some time close to midnight on Saturday evening as many campers slept, there were obvious concerns for the safety of those in the area.

Fortunately though, nobody was hurt, although I understand a car, a caravan, a campervan and several tents went missing. Here’s the story…

Turns out though, it wasn’t a sinkhole after all. Geoscientists have said it was more likely to have been what they describe as a “near-shore landslide“, whatever one of those is. The scientist on the video I watched didn’t fully explain it, other than to say “it’s complicated“.

I suspect it is.

Snow-like hail

Whilst I was nowhere near Rainbow Beach at around midnight on Saturday, I was driving through a suburb called Taringa on Sunday afternoon. Taringa is about 12 km up the road from where I live.

As I drove through, I was aware that something was unusual, I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. It was a warm day, reasonably sunny too, which is why the view from my car window was very strange. People at the side of the road appeared to be playing in snow… I pulled over into a car park, there seemed to be snow everywhere… On closer inspection though, it wasn’t snow at all, but very small hail stones… So, I suppose this is called a Hailman…

A wild storm whipped thru Brisbane this arvo. Ankle deep hail @ Taringa. Pic ex IG @sherryfish2904 @ABCNewsBrisbane pic.twitter.com/sUDjnLzER7 — Shelley Lloyd (@shelleymlloyd) September 27, 2015

Taringa had apparently been hit by a vicious storm shortly before I drove through with lots of hail and lots of rain…

Lots of hail at Taringa station #bnestorm pic.twitter.com/MBai1ak1lG

— Dan Smith (@0DanSmith) September 27, 2015

Low-flying aircraft

On Saturday night, several various aircraft were seen flying very low across the city, over the top of some of our tall buildings. Can you see one of them here? Or here? Look, here’s another one… Helicopters were also seen hovering just above the Brisbane River… This though was quite normal, something like this happens every year, it’s called Riverfire.

Lunchtime might be a little noisy in Brisbane, with the Super Hornets testing their wings ahead of #Riverfire. #9News pic.twitter.com/IuLH8UNYdZ — Nine News Brisbane (@9NewsBrisbane) September 25, 2015

Which all kicked off when a C17 flew over the city…

Yes, it’s certainly been a strange couple of days.