Roseanne Barrett
BEFORE Rose Connolly returned to assess flood damage to her Theodore home, she made a mental list of what she expected would be left.
“What I did was I imagined the water being up here,” she said, gesturing at chest height. “And I thought, well, if it’s not that bad, then I won’t be that upset.
“I was expecting some damage, but it’s just the couch, the table, the four beds, all the music, DVDs — well, a lot, really.”
As she shuffled through the muddy and extremely slippery remains of her modest home, Ms Connolly — the sister of comedian and actor Gerry — appeared overwhelmed at the size of the cleaning task ahead.
On the realisation that a picture of her father was probably beyond repair, tears welled in her eyes. “The carport is just upside down. It picked up the table. Look how high it was — up to the pictures,” she said.
In a scene set to be repeated many, many times across Queensland, Ms Connolly was yesterday one of the first to return from an evacuation centre to her home in the central Queensland town.
Theodore’s small community of about 300 was evacuated last Wednesday, the first total evacuation in Queensland history, after the Dawson River burst its banks and inundated the town.
Police Acting Inspector Mark Stanton said residents who had been able to return so far were shocked when they arrived back in the town.
“When they got in, it was just typical of shock, it took a while to impact on them,” he said. “Certainly, with some of the older people, there was nothing you could say or do.”
One of the last to leave and the first to return was the local GP, Bruce Chater. Yesterday, he inspected his consulting rooms, which were covered with about 5cm of black mud.
“A bloke who came in said it looked like a bomb went off and that’s what it was — a mud bomb,” Dr Chater said.
“It’s going to be really tough for people. I think the most important thing is we’ve got to keep the community together.”
Also cleaning up yesterday was Adrian Dale, who returned to find his shed and storeroom in chaos.
Mr Dale, who was being helped by his brother and father, said he had no idea how long the clean-up would take them.
But he said he was concerned that the economic future of the town would be difficult.
“For me, that’s the big worry, the lack of income,” he said.
Residents are still not able to stay in the town, where a rebuilding effort is under way to restore water for cleaning and drinking.
Further south, the anxious residents of St George yesterday made their final preparations ahead of the Balonne River’s expected peak to a record high of 14m tomorrow.
As 10,000 extra sandbags were flown in to the isolated town, council workers and contractors worked non-stop to deliver the levees that would complete the town’s 14.5m-high defence line.
Balonne Shire Mayor Donna Stewart predicted about 30 of the 44 houses outside the wall of levees would be inundated by tomorrow’s peak.
“We’ve done all we can to protect those houses inside the protective line,” Ms Stewart said.
“Now all we can do is just sit back and wait to see what the peak will be.”
Source: www.theaustralian.com.au
