Ashleigh Brieffies is standing on the front steps of her home in central Queensland on Monday afternoon as knee-deep water sweeps over the grounds of her property.
“If it comes up another 2ft we’ll probably be underwater,” says Brieffies, who lives in Clermont. “I think we’ll be looking for a boat or a chopper.”
The showhorse owner and cattle breeder and her veterinarian husband, Brendan, are not the only ones isolated and preparing for the worst as ex-Tropical Cyclone Koji unleashes torrential rain across swathes of north and central Queensland.
Nor are they the only ones calling for a helicopter.
More than a year’s rain fell in one week in some places, with stranded communities facing months of isolation.
Emergency services issued a flash-flood warning for Clermont, about 300km inland from Rockhampton, on Monday afternoon.
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“The Bureau of Meteorology predicted we were gonna get a fair bit of rain,” Brieffies says. “But I don’t think anyone realised how bad it would get.”
She says more than 250mm of rain fell on the property in a matter of days, the bulk of it on Sunday.
“It came in pretty hard and fast,” she says.
Brieffies made it into Clermont township on Sunday to stock up on “baked beans and spaghetti cans” but, by mid-morning on Monday, she could no longer leave her property.
Clermont itself was cut off, with one motel owner saying she was getting calls from people living near its low-lying lagoon whose homes were being evacuated.
“I wasn’t overly calm this morning, to be completely honest,” Brieffies says.
“I worry for everyone in the area and we’re dealing with these fires down in Victoria … everyone’s being hit a bit hard at the minute. You pray and you hope it doesn’t happen to you but, when it does, it’s a real wake-up call.
“You can’t help being a bit teary as you try to push through it.”
Military may be called in
Dotted across the state, other towns are being marooned by flood waters and landslips.
The Mackay mayor, Greg Williamson, says the town of Eungella, which sits at the top of an escarpment in the ranges inland from the coastal city, may be cut off for months to come.
He says some localities within his shire received up to 700mm of rain in a 48-hour period.
“That’s a serious amount of rain and it’s brought with it some flash flooding,” he says.
The mayor says the road up to Eungulla is “seriously damaged” and the back road out “now impassable”.
“So we have over 200 people now just cut off,” he says.
“And we will be working through how we resupply them. For the initial supplies, in terms of generator fuel, milk, bread, medical supplies, those sorts of things, we think it’s going to be helicopter – but we don’t have the helicopters to do that”.
Williamson says the military may be required to make those supply drops. Based on drone footage of the main road into town, the mayor estimates it could be closed to traffic for months.
Two nearby communities in the Pioneer Valley, Pinnacle and Gargett, are without potable water, the mayor says, after “the ground shifted” and a reservoir was drained.
The mood in some marooned communities is calm. The inland coalmining hub of Dysart was cut off on Monday, with a local councillor, Verniece Russell, saying the town of almost 3,000 could be an island for days to come.
“There’s a standard joke around here that as soon as we get more than an inch of rain everyone buys up all the bread and milk,” she says. “But everyone’s quite happy and relaxed.”
And speaking from Mackay on Monday afternoon, the Queensland premier, David Crisafulli, brought the “good news” that the weather system was “breaking up” and had brought “welcome rain” to parts of the state.
But major flood warnings remained in place, he said, including for the Connors, Isaac, Flinders and Georgina rivers, while the gulf country catchments were in flood watch.
A Queensland police service spokesperson said there had been 158 requests for help from the State Emergency Service between 5am Sunday and Monday afternoon
“Why I raise that is there is the prospect of those heavy falls moving west,” Crisafulli said. “You’ve got areas that have had an immense amount of rainfall – some of them more than a year’s fall in a week period – those catchments are swollen.”
The premier said authorities were carefully monitoring rainfall in those already drenched catchments.
“Further rain there could be devastating for the north-west,” he said.
Richmond, a town that sits halfway between the inland mining city of Mount Isa and Townsville, was forecast to receive up to 100mm of rain over the three days from Tuesday.
Tens of thousands of cattle have already died in that part of the state and up into the gulf country after weeks of torrential rain.
There, days of sunshine have led to waters receding and cattle emerging from their islands of grass on to fresh pasture, the Richmond mayor, John Wharton, says.
“We don’t want any more rain,” he says. “We can handle 20mm, 30mm – that’ll wash a lot of grass with mud on it.
“But 100mm is not welcome. We do not want that.”
