Quotulatiousness

December 3, 2021

Australian-American War of 1942 – The Battle of Brisbane

Filed under: Australia, Britain, History, Military, USA, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 2 Dec 2021

America shares a language and large parts of its culture with Britain and Australia. But when tens of thousands of US troops arrive in 1942, things will be far from smooth. While the alliance remains firm, their soldiers will spend almost as much time fighting each other as they do the Axis.
(more…)

January 17, 2011

Another report from Brisbane

Filed under: Australia, Environment, Railways — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:49

My friend Roger is doing well (having been outside the worst of the flooding), and sent this update on the rail and transportation situation in Queensland:

A couple of pictures of the western rail line from Brisbane to Toowoomba. The line, mostly double-track has been extensively damaged and willl probably be out of commission for over three months.

This shows flood debris, and a bull, lodged on one bridge. Some 20 people in the area are also missing so there may well be bodies in the debris as well. It is being carefully checked but there is a huge amount. One body was found in her house which had already been searched twice before.

Part of the Moura coal line in Central Queensland. There could be some delays here as well.

Meanwhile, in muddy Brisbane, in an effort to keep cars off the roads all public transport is free for the next few days. The railways parked their electric commuter trains on some tracks that were well above flood level. Unfortunately, graffiti artists, using Facebook and Twatter, called up every idiot on the East Cost that had a can of spray paint. Some even came from Melbourne. About half the train fleet was so badly overpainted that the sets could not be run. Cost estimates are in the order of a couple of million to clean.

The cops can now read Facebook etc. and feel they have enough evidence to throw at least some of the perps in the slammer. Hopefully with their private parts painted a bright blue.

Update: It’s not just flooding in Queensland . . . there’s also now flooding in Victoria. There are always idiots who try to do stupid things, especially around flooded rivers:

A bizarre decision to ride an inflatable doll down a flood-swollen Yarra River blew up in a woman’s face yesterday when she lost her latex playmate in a rough patch.

The incident prompted a warning from police that blow-up sex toys are “not recognised flotation devices’’.

Police and a State Emergency Services crew were called to the rescue when the woman and a man, both 19, struck trouble at Warrandyte North about 4.30pm yesterday.

They were floating down the river on two inflatable dolls and had just passed the Pound Bend Tunnel when the woman lost her toy in turbulent water.

January 14, 2011

Waters starting to recede in Brisbane

Filed under: Australia, Economics, Environment — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:53

Roger Henry sends another update:

Flood waters have receded far enough today that some serious cleaning up can commence. A semi-organised army of volunteers descended on the various suburbs that they could get access to and just started helping home and shop owners clean up. Tomorrow, an organized army will be available. Some 50,000 people, in two shifts, will be bussed into various efforst to do some serious cleaning. On Sunday it is expected they will do it again. An amazing community effort.


Photo from The Australian


Photo from The Australian

In the long run though things are still serious. Everyone is going to have to pay for the damage and loses, and this includes you guys. Due to earlier bad weather in Oz, global wheat prices are at record levels, the current flooding has almost destroyed the sugar crop thus global sugar prices have almost doubled. Coal shortages will be sending steel prices up so your imports are going to be that much dearer, and so on an do on.

Individuals here have some heart-breaking decisions in front of them. One middle-aged couple we saw, had lost their rented house, their entire possessions, the car — with payments owing — and their jobs. They both told the camera that they were all right. What the Hell. How can they be all right? They are sleeping on the floor in a Church hall wearing donated clothing. Sure, they seemed fit and determined and, one hopes, they will get going again, but they were not all right. There are lots more like them.

Sadly, some looters have come out of the shadows. 18 people have been arrested so far and the cops have reminded potential perps that there is a possible ten year sentence for looting.

Roads and rail are badly damaged. Some pics of exposed rail tracks where miles of it has been washed out. Some major bridges are also damaged. One large, steel structure was visibly out of alignment.

By and large, much like any community does when it has had a kick in the teeth, people are regrouping and getting order restored. It might take awhile, but it will all work out.

It will be very useful if we don’t have to do it all again in the near future.

Some humour in it all. A liquor store had about 500 bottles of wine that had lost their labels. The owner was proposing a lucky dip sale or a blind auction. He had about two dozen volunteers washing, drying, and re-stacking his stock. Didn’t seem to be much fear of any of it ‘walking’.

Update: Here’s an image from the Brisbane City Council, showing the extent of the flooding (flooded areas in yellow, river banks in darker yellow):

Additional information on the flood history of Brisbane at the New Scientist website.

January 13, 2011

More updates from Brisbane

Filed under: Australia, Environment — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:09

Roger Henry is thankfully out of the worst of the flooded area, but he’s been sending updates:

Most of the “Southbank” recreation area has been inundated, including the ‘beach’. Shouldn’t be much of a recovery problem once the mud has been hosed off. Don’t know about the maritime museum. I imagine that the old graving dock would have flooded, but the last pictures I saw of the ship was that the bottom was sealed — maybe not sound, but it should resist a short immersion — and she was moored fore and aft. Thus I doubt if she has gone off.

The river ferries, cross-river and the cats were all moved down into Moreton Bay and secured in a marina somewhere. The pontoons, bridges, sheds etc, have been largely washed away and may take some time to replace. The Moggil vehicle ferry, a quite large vessel, was saved after a chopper was used to fly in an extra anchor. Otherwise, the military had orders to sink her.

Literally hundreds of small, and not so small, boats and pontoons washed down the river. One guy had his fore-sail up to try and get some steerage and was heading downstream at a fair clip. Don’t know how he fared, A large, floating restaurant was wrecked against a bridge piling.

A salvage firm has been doing a brisk business herding up all these wayward vessels and parking them where best they can.

Police have also caught a few thieves trying to do some ‘salvage’. One guy had winched a pontoon and speed boat on to a trailer when intercepted by the cops. They confiscated everything as ‘evidence’, gave him a summons and told him to walk home.

There has been some looting in Ipswich. The Mayor said that if they could find a lamppost that wasn’t submerged it should be put to its alternative use. Alternatively, if someone caught a looter and tied them to a tree as a flood gauge then he, the Mayor, wouldn’t be fussed.

Don’t know about the rail museum. The flood height was about three feet lower than estimated so it may have been spared. The local station had at least four foot of water in it. The platforms were covered.

The situation remains dire and there have been a couple more drownings. Otherwise it is now a waiting game. Went shopping today. A few empty shelves in the supermarket but still plenty of essentials. Stocked up on a few necessarys. Traffic was a bit thin and the nearby freeway sounded very quiet. Plenty of cars moving around but not many trucks. About one third of the small merchants in the shopping mall were closed. Probably couldn’t get their staff in.

Interesting pictures of our previous Prime Minister walking around the streets of his neighbourhoood. Up to his knees in flood water and helping people move. He was still at it after the cameras left. Very democratic.

And a further update about eight hours later:

Water levels, though high, are dropping and the weather remains fine. A clean-up plan is afoot, to start at first light tomorrow and proceed progressively until the water is out of the city. This just gets roads, power, phones etc. back on line. Individual houses and businesses will be addressed as time goes by. It all sound sensible and is really the outcome of some long considered disaster recovery planning.

I did go to another supermarket this afternoon. One would think that looters had been in. No bottled water, milk, eggs, bread, long-life milk and coffee mate, toilet paper or veges. Plenty of soft-drinks, frozen foods, meat,. Ice creams deli lines etc. All of which require refrigeration. There is now very little chance of further power cuts. It all seems a bit odd as supply routes are now re-opening and, for those not directly flooded, there is almost no need to hoard supplies.

Some of the towns and villages in the far west parts of the state are having problems both with supplies and the risk of more severe flooding. Some towns for the second or third time in almost as many weeks.

Some 62 suburbs are affected. Bulimba, which has some low-lying parts is largely underwater. TV has been showing extensive footage of the Brisbane area and there is no doubt some/many very sad stories. The most dramatic area is an agricultural valley about 70 miles to the west that was hit by very fast flash-floods. This is where most of the spectacular devastation occurred and where most of the deaths happened. There is now some 18 dead and 70+ almost certainly dead. Army, police and volunteers are searching about 200 miles of creeks and fields looking for the missing. Also the place where most of the terrifying personal stories are coming to light.

So, as a disaster, it has been awful for very many people, but I remain personally unaffected. That also feels quite odd. It is like there had been a tornado that flattened one side of town but left yours untouched.

Not the end times. Part of living near the tropics. Although the weather for the next week or so should be kind, there are two cyclones forming up in the Coral Sea and one of them is well placed to swing in to the coast and gives us a real pasting before the end of the month. Or it might drift over to New Zealand 🙂

January 12, 2011

How urban planning may have contributed to the Toowoomba flood damage

Filed under: Australia, Environment — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:07

Heather Brown goes back into flood-ravaged Toowoomba:

Early yesterday morning I went back to the bruised and battered Margaret Street to support any local business that still had the heart to open. My coffee shop was handing out free coffees to the battered owners of the local businesses who had lost so much. When I went to buy my newspaper, the newsagent told me he was devastated, not because of what had happened but because the engineer who had worked on the beautification project told him he couldn’t make them listen when he pleaded for bigger pipes — “18-footers” he called them — to let the water through, because it simply didn’t suit the aesthetics of the architects and landscapers.

So that’s what happened to my city, folks, the same as happened to so much of flooded Queensland. We did stupid and really, really dumb things because we thought we could get away with them. We built the wrong sort of houses and the wrong sort of bridges. We built towns and suburbs on flood plains. And we ignored at our peril the forces of nature and the history of the great floods that have shaped this continent for thousands of years.

In our arrogance, we created towns and cities better suited to the whims of bean-counters and city-bound architects than the natural lie of the land. And for 20 years we cheerfully welcomed new settlers to Queensland with a “beautiful one day, perfect the next”.

We didn’t tell them what this place was really like when it rained. And we were wrong.

H/T to Roger Henry for the link.

January 11, 2011

Footage of flash flooding in Queensland

Filed under: Australia, Randomness — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:24

You can donate to the flood relief effort at http://www.qld.gov.au/floods/donate.html.

H/T to BoingBoing for the link.

Update: The Guardian is reporting at least nine people are dead, with many more missing:

Floodwaters are now heading for Brisbane where the river, which runs through the centre of the city, has broken its banks and police have urged local residents to begin evacuations.

Police described the wall of water that swept through the city of Toowoomba, west of Brisbane, as an “inland instant tsunami”. Cars were tossed like toys down the street, trees uprooted and businesses inundated as the floodwaters tore through the centre of town. Four people including two children were killed.

“Houses were ripped from their stumps. This is unbelievable damage,” said the Toowoomba mayor, Peter Taylor.

From Toowoomba, the water flowed down the Lockyer valley where emergency services plucked more than 40 people from houses isolated by the torrent, which hit with little warning. Thunderstorms and driving rain were keeping helicopters from reaching people still in danger this morning.

Update, the second: My friend and occasional contributor of blogging material Roger Henry is in the Brisbane area and reports on local conditions:

It has been raining all day with a prolonged thunder-storm. West of here it has been raining at an average 6 inches an hour since early this morning. All bets against a major flood are now off. Ipswich looks like it might go underwater. Caboolture, to our north, flooded so fast that residents were fleeing on foot with no clear idea of where to go (Uphill?).

The four-lane highway north is now a 20 mile long parking lot as the cops try to get traffic turned around. That should be fun.

Stocked up on batteries, candles, tinned food and some extra gas cylinders for the little stove. Water is not an issue:-)

We were assured, by experts, that the rain would stop this morning. The opposite seems to have occurred and now they are hoping tomorrow might be fine.

Ooops. Emergency services have just issued a continuing severe weather alert for the next twelve hours.

The problem is not confined to here. Bad weather has spread into
northern New South Wales, and several rivers there are now in flood.

Getting very interesting.

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