Many homes are seriously damaged after torrential rain, but residents know it could have been much worse and that they were ‘pretty lucky’
- Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast
Like anyone who has grown up and spent their life in the wet tropics of far north Queensland, Sonia Pollock is used to a bit of precipitation.
“So we just thought it was rain at first,” she says of the torrential downpour around her flat in south-west Townsville.
Later that day her son John was sent home with the rest of his classmates. By Saturday morning the family were getting a welfare check from the police who, by that afternoon, returned and told them to get ready be evacuated.
By Sunday their flat in Rosslea on a bend in the Ross River, was declared a “black zone” covering five other Townsville suburbs where potentially life threatening flooding was forecast. And so Sonia, John, her other son Trent and their black cat Storm found themselves inside an indoor sports centre at the foot of the city’s Castle Hill, the pink granite monolith turned ochre and blood red by the pelting rain.
Despite a lifetime growing up in the Tablelands, Cairns and now Townsville, Pollock says she had never had to flee her home before. The rain, she says, “came from nowhere”.
“I prayed every night,” Pollock says as she emerges from the makeshift emergency shelter more than 48 hours later.
For Pollock, and for much of the city known as the capital of north Queensland, those prayers were answered. Farther north in the town of Ingham, a body was found in a cane paddock, bringing the number of flood deaths in that town to two. Cut off by road, without power and water, many there continued to face dwindling supplies and mounting hardship and danger on Tuesday afternoon.
Even on the outskirts of Townsville, in places such as Bluewater, people were returning home to devastation and the knowledge their homes would not be habitable for many months – possibly not until next year.
But as Pollock got into her grey sedan on Tuesday afternoon under skies the leaden colour of her car and amid sporadic drizzle, she knew she was going to a safe and secure home where she could finally get a good night’s sleep.
The flooding had peaked – and not at the height feared – the rain had eased, and police told people it was safe to go home.
Queensland’s premier, David Crisafulli, himself an Ingham boy originally, said from Townsville that the city had “dodged a bullet”.
Sonia Pollock, John, Trent and Storm were among the last to leave the emergency shelters – she had just dashed home and confirmed it had not gone under.
“It dodged us,” Pollock says. “The next street over from us didn’t quite make it, so we were pretty lucky … this time around”.worst
And yet, even as her car idles outside the emergency shelter packed with the few clothes she had grabbed that would have been her only possessions had rain fallen as meteorologists feared, Pollock is not entertaining thoughts about a change of scenery. Trent, she says, has a disability and needs his routine.
“We’ll just go back to normal, everyday things,” Pollock says.
Another woman, whose home did not fare as well, was already planning to ask her work for a transfer. She had not long recovered from flood damage in floods in 2019 – a weather event that was described as the worst in 120 years. How could she justify cultivating a garden again and making her house homely when, next January, she might well find herself in an evacuation centre again? She did not want to speak further on the record.
Rose Hinds and Mal Clark bore witness to the precarious situation many find themselves in when faced with natural disaster. When they fled their home in Rosslea on Sunday, Clark shoved whatever objects he could fit into the tray of his ute.
“The mower, whipper snipper, air compressor … anything of value,” the security guard says.
Abandoned at home, however, was his $60,000 2008 F6 Ford Performance vehicle. Thankfully, it was spared from the clutches the Ross River.
“We weren’t insured,” he says.
Packing her four cats – Missy, Psycho, Attitude, Tilly – back into the ute on Tuesday, Hinds can’t wait to get her and her pets home.
“You can see our animals have just been stressed out,” she says. “They are not in their own comfort”.
But she is immensely grateful to the small army of support workers who not only provided shelter, but everything from bedding and towels to pet food and counselling.
One of those workers, Red Cross’ Morgan Knowles, flew up from Brisbane to provide field operations support.
“It’s always a beautiful moment to see that everyone who has been in an evacuation centre – because we know that this is a last resort for people – it is always beautiful to see that they have found somewhere that is more private, that is more personal that is a space for them,” she says as she and her colleagues begin packing up and cleaning.
“But it will be a long road ahead, I’m sure, for many families.
“It’s just the beginning for some people, when they leave these centres”.
