The Brisbane River’s suburban tributaries are designed to work as the city’s floodway. It’s a system that works – until it doesn’t
On Sunday morning, residents near Brisbane’s fast-rising creeks are watching what feels like a replay of the 2022 floods.
Water is gushing over the same streets, threatening some of the same homes.
On Praed Street at Red Hill, Enoggera Creek has swollen too quickly and is now lapping the doors of a grey hatchback left near the park. Three years ago, flood waters submerged a grey hatchback that had been left in almost the same spot.
We’re often warned that every flood in Brisbane is different – that different parts of our flood-prone city can be at risk, depending on where and how the rain falls. In 2011, the Brisbane River spilled its banks, after an extended period of heavy rainfall put so much water into the system it could no longer hold.
The most recent flood, in 2022, was felt most keenly in the suburban tributaries – the creek system that acts, by the city’s design, like Brisbane’s floodway. It works until it doesn’t.
Early on Sunday morning, Enoggera Creek looked like it does several times a year after periods of heavy, but not uncommon, rainfall. It was full to bursting: the low bridges were underwater and water was starting to pool in nearby parkland.
Within three hours – by about 10am – the creek had come up towards streets and properties in the same places that signalled the arrival of the 2022 floods.
Many of the homes along Praed Street and nearby went under in 2022.
There is a block of flats almost adjacent to the creek – low-income housing that might have been demolished after the 2022 flood – where people are starting to quickly bail out with their possessions.
Along Ashgrove Avenue, sandbags are out protecting homes that flooded three years ago. Some are still rebuilding, or in the process of being raised above the flood line.
The great concern now is more rain, particularly if it comes in a very short period of time. There is nowhere else for the water to go but into homes. There’s little more locals can do but hope it doesn’t continue.
That is a familiar feeling for people in Brisbane, who have faced the same situation now four times in 15 years: the city’s flawed, flood-prone design being asked to cope with massive volumes of water.
Every time the creek rises, so do the city’s anxieties. As the creek spills in the same places it did three years ago – almost to the day – that familiar feeling seems returns over and over again.