This week, on various different days, communities in and around Brisbane have been marking the anniversary of last year’s floods.
As the reporter in the video says, the weather around Brisbane this week has been absolutely glorious. He’s right, it has been truly scorchio. Temperatures have been reaching between 32° and 37°C.
So it does seem strange to be talking about floods.
So what are we talking about?
Bushfires.
Yes, this time last year Central Queensland looked more like an ocean in some parts, but today bushfires have destroyed about 500 hectares at Yarwun, north-west of Gladstone. There have also been fires at Moura and Rockhampton.
There are also bushfires in the Southern Flinders Ranges of South Australia and bushfire warnings in place for Midwest Gascoyne Region, Western Australian and also in metropolitan Perth.
More locally, we have a bushfire at Moreton Island. Regular readers will know that I have been to North Stradbroke Island on a couple of occasions. Well, Moreton Island is just above it.
Nine days ago, a bushfire started when some gas bottles exploded….
As the reporter in this one says, the fire could last last for weeks. That seemed a long time to me, surely they could put the fire out quicker than that?
Apparently not, the fire is still raging today and only yesterday around 300 campers were forced to relocate when the fire jumped a containment line.
It just goes to show how hard it is to fight these bushfires once they get a hold.
As strange as it may seem, last year’s floods are in some way related to this year’s bushfires. All fires need “fuel” to burn, and the floods of last year have made many barren areas now lush and green.
Perfect for bushfires.
I hope they put the fire out on Moreton Island soon, we’ve booked to go next month.
Meanwhile, it isn’t strange to be talking about floods up at Port Hedland, which is in the north of Western Australia. Cyclone Heidi made landfall a couple of days ago, now the area is on a flood alert….
And I moved to Australia for the weather.
Brisbane has had a couple of cool summers recently. I remember being extremely disappointed in ’11/’12…
As for floods and fires – if you stay close to the city you’re fine. Ditto for creepy crawlies actually… I’ve never lived in the outer suburbs of an Australian city, always within 10-15 minutes of the CBD. I had to turn my phone off for a few days after the flood because friends and family kept calling to check up on me. Considerate, but annoying and I was nowhere near the flooding (in the Valley).
I’ve never seen snakes or big spiders except for in the far far outback. And overseas.
Just thought I’d put that out there, for anyone slightly put off by you “bad things” posts 😛 they’re entirely avoidable with minimal effort, just stick to the inner city and more modern/less wild places. Like you say Bob, your area is pretty much the country, albeit conveniently close to the city… Brisbane is funny like that.
Ha ha, your family and friends probably thought you’d drowned then, with your phone. I kept my phone on, nobody rang 🙂
That’s what I love about living where I live, it feels like I’m in the countryside, but I’m very close to the city. By the way, where I live, I’ve only ever seen two snakes, both were in the road and I saw them from the car. So snake sightings are pretty rare, even out here.
An update:
Sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking, but it’s not two snakes, it’s five. Two snakes slithered past me when I was on other people’s acreage, both, I think, were green tree snakes. Can’t believe I forgot the other one which definitely was a green tree snake, I videoed it and put it in a post called Snake in my house.
Yeah ah well… The first and last time I stayed in Brissy was in the winter (I was going to settle there). It was stinking hot for three weeks in July. There were Cockroaches all over the place wherever I go 5 – 10 kms south-west of the city. The Unit I rented was crawling full of them. They got into my sealed foodstuff in the cupboards and caused the TV to blow up and when I looked inside the back of that TV I found at least half a dozen big fat ‘roaches all cooked and charred on some kind of electrical point. Cheeze!. I threatened the estate agent to either refund all of the rent money that I spent staying at the unit and all the bond, along with a replacement for a TV, a food shopping list and for not fumigating the Unit and for not cleaning the place (‘roaches carry diseases) before thet rented it out to me, or face justice in court.
Yep, got every cent of my money back and a new TV!.
Brisbane = I renamed this city and I call it ‘roachbane. Note the word “bane”, is ironic, well, to me anyway.
I don’t like it here anymore.
So I pissed off to Mullumbimby in far north coast NSW and felt better there for the next 13 years instead. It has year round warm humid weather, rains a lot, but has mostly cloud cover for blocking sunburns, umbrellas galore!. Water, glorious unflouridated water!. Downside:- flooded causeways, gravel roads to town and washed-out driveways and, kamikaze Magpies in breeding season attacking from behind, punching holes on the back of our heads!.
Really, I did’nt complain, none of these had diseases!.
Hot in July? That’s the middle of winter! You should try popping up here in January!
Anyway, we’ve got the cockroach thing beaten around here now, we have pest control. Not been to Mullumbimby, but did visit Murwillumbah just slightly north of it, that was quite a good town.
More confirmation that Oz is a land of extremes. Down here in NSW we’ve been wearing sweaters for half the (alleged) summer this year.
Sweaters, yes, I remember those 🙂 Last thing we need up here though. I have some jumpers I don’t use anymore, swap for an umbrella?
Yes, exactly. Less than two weeks later, all the talk is of flooding now, bushfires are yesterday’s news. It’s raining again!
Ah yes Queensland “beautiful on day perfect the next”. The advertising campaign got you in!
Melbourne “Perfect on minute or wait a minute we can fix that.”
Sydney ” Would you like rain hail or hunidity?
Darwin “Would you like an exotic disease?
Adelaide? “Would you like boring hot weather?”
Perth” Would you like pommies with this lousy hot weather and shark infested beaches?”
Hobart? “Would you like Cold summers and even colder winter winds?”
Er these are all tourism magnet at times? Weather them all and experience a bloody huge continent!
And that concludes the weather in and around Australia for today.
Update: Brisbane…
FORGET Melbourne having weather all over the place. Try Brisbane for size.
In the past 12 days Archerfield on the city’s southside has experienced temperature swings of 22.6C.
On January 2 it dropped to 14.2C overnight, on January 11 the suburb recorded a maximum of 36.8C and Saturday night, it dropped back down to 18.2C.
The crazy temperature swings come as moderate to heavy rain is predicted for central Queensland today, after falls of up to 200mm were recorded in the 24 hours to 9am yesterday.
Source: Courier Mail.
And then there’s Canberra. Thursday morning the temperature hit 1.6 degrees C. 1.6! In January. That’s the lowest January temperature on record beating the old record of 1.8 from 1956. It seems Canberra and summer have had a bit of a disagreement and are avoiding each other 🙁