It is Australia Day as I write this, 26 January 2011. In just a few short days it will be my Ruby Jubilee, forty years since I left England to live in Australia.

Brisbane was my first home, a city currently mopping up after the devastating floods. The water didn’t quite reach the 1974 level when the house I lived in was up to its gutters with floodwater. But this time Brisbane was just one of a series of towns, villages and isolated homesteads engulfed. It defies belief that, in Queensland alone, an area bigger than Germany and France combined was under water. We have all become experts in the effects of La Niña, the weather pattern which has caused these massive rainfalls and floods over nearly the whole continent… even Tasmania in our southern ocean has been affected by the tropical wet from the north.

Rockhampton, home of son Peter and his wife, was an early victim. They managed to fly out on one of the last planes to leave before the runway was flooded, to travel overseas on an already-booked holiday. Their dog was left in kennels, high enough up the hill to be safe. But the waters kept rising and rising, so seventy dogs were walked further up the hill and enjoyed their own summer holiday in a series of suburban back yards!  Four weeks on and the airport has only just reopened. The city is slowly returning to normality but for many there are houses to be rebuilt or refurbished; road and rail infrastructure will take more time to repair.

All the affected towns have had an army (quite literally) to help rescue stranded people. The stories that have emerged of the efforts of our army helicopter crews have been nothing short of miraculous, live power lines, rapidly rising waters, night goggles the only way to see and people plucked from a death only minutes away. All those young crew risked their lives time and time again. I salute them and all the other people who were prepared to risk their own lives to save others.

And now the big clean up is underway. Returning to formerly flooded homes is not without its own dangers. The venomous snakes have swum to higher ground, even if that higher ground is a flooded house. People are being greeted by them as they return home.

But flood victims are also being greeted by thousands upon thousands of people, all volunteers who have turned out with mops and buckets to help neighbours and strangers to empty their homes of sodden carpets, sofas, mattresses, mud covered appliances and then scrub down the walls and floors. Trucks have been out in force removing all the debris to the tips. It has been an amazing outpouring of help, physical and financial for those whose homes have been inundated.

Some delightful tales have emerged; the man with his boat who managed to guide all the exhausted horses to safety; the tug boat captain who somehow was able to steer a 100 metre length of drifting boardwalk safely between all the bridge pylons to get it down the Brisbane river; the young rowing club members who moved their own boats, then returned to ensure those of their most fierce and bitter rivals were also moved to higher ground. 

Sir Michael Parkinson gave this year’s Australia Day address. He said his father thought Australians were a breakaway tribe of Yorkshire men, this observation being based on the way they play their cricket – tough, aggressive, fiercely competitive and without compromise. He also recognised that helping one another, reaching out a hand of friendship is also the Australian way. He is right. We are ‘all in it together’, there is no place here for  imitations imposed by accent, class, privilege or education. The notion of community, volunteer and being a good neighbour is what helps us to survive in such desperate times as last years bush fires or this years floods.

As I reflect on my forty years Down Under, I look back at the opportunities I have been able to appreciate, see the opportunities my children enjoy at present and look forward to what my grandchildren will experience in the future. I am content that I made a good decision way back in 1971.

Caroline Gaden.

STOP PRESS

Yesterday Cyclone Yasi hit the north of Queensland. Category 5, it tore across the coast with winds up to 300 k.p.h., bringing storm surges of 9 metres above the normal high tide.

But people had warning. Thousands moved to evacuation centres, places the authorities deemed safer than suburban homes, many of these were shopping complexes. People arrived with matresses, water, torches, precious toys and hope. Cairns hospital patients were flown to Brisbane.

Yasi left no property untouched. The noise was like a jet aircraft... it went on for hours. People sheltered in the strongest room in their house, often the bathroom as many have a concrete pad under the floor.

Those lucky enough to have their roofs still intact had windows smashed or fences blown out. But so many rooves have blown away, so many walls have gone and belongings scatted into the wind. Trees are without leaves, the banana and sugar cane crops are flattened.

A huge area has been totally devastated, it looks like a war zone. There will so much rebuilding to do. SO far there has been no reported loss of life, in fact three new babies were born, two at Innisfail hospital as the cyclone hit the town and one in an evacution centre. All the mums have said there is one name they definitely won't be giving their new babies... Yasi.   CG