"That is our swimming pool just down there, that’s quite a large swimming pool that had a, yeah, a big canopy over it, and then a pontoon with a pile bind in it, arrived on the other side, and over about an hour and a half, just pushed it and took it, and just smashed it."
Even though the homes were spared, they have work to do because of what was washed up in their doorstep, a speedboat and a mooring that was attached to. No one knows where it has come from. A television set floats among rubbish, clogging another apartment car park.
To give you an idea of the power of the floodwater and what’s been carrying downstream. That’s a heavy steel cage full of gas bottles and it's found itself washed up marooned in the middle of a suburban street.
It’s the nature of Brisbane’s undulating terrain which is adjacent to the river that some streets are meters deep in filthy water while properties nearby are completely untouched. Queensland’s premier reflected on the battering her state has endured in recent weeks and said the rebuilding would be akin to post-war reconstruction.
“As we weep for what we have lost, and as we grieve for family and friends, and we confront the challenge that is before us, I want us to remember who we are-- we are Queenslanders, we are the people that breed tough north of the border.”
The water police are dealing with a massive though temporary increase in their jurisdiction, and they’re checking on those who are stranded in their homes. One man drowned as he checked his flooded property. But the murky water which covers so much of this state also conceals more bodies. The human as well as the economic cost of this disaster is still being calculated.
Ian Woods, Sky News, Brisbane.