Our Own Little Flood

Eloise and I took the dogs to Bribie Island today and had a jolly time building sandcastles and paddling in the waves until a worrying looking grey mass of cloud began to lower to the West of us and I decided it was time for home.

So we drove back along the sea front with Eloise pointing out Chino shops where we might like to stop and I prevaricating over the rain and dogs.

Soon indeed it started to rain though not that heavily and it only cleared up when we got home, where it was soon apparent that we were out of milk. So we hopped on the bike and rode over to Fresco's fruit market.

When we crossed the brook there was a pretty decent flow of water creating a quite impressive cataract over the the rocks just upstream of the footbridge.

When we returned half and hour later, only an inch or two of the footbridge was visible under the torrent which had now burst the brook's banks. We (I) merrily (and carefully) cycled across regardless with the water reaching up to the axles of the wheels. On the bridge a little chitchat established that the brook had just expanded to this extent in the last five minutes.

After dropping off the shopping we went back with the camera and toured up and down the brook, riding through it where there weren't footpaths any more and generally goggling at the amount of water that must be coming down from upstream from what was, from what we had seen, only a pretty average downpour.

We saw Paul and Carol later and apparently while we'd been out there'd been an absolutely torrential rainstorm which had dropped half an inch of water in half an hour.

All this as extreme weather events cause flooding across SE Queensland and Northern NSW, as this news article attests.

Sounds like ideal weather for waterfall-watching, don't you think?