By Tobias Jurss-Lewis, journalist, ABC News Queensland
The first thing you want to do is cry. But you can't because they're not crying. Not the old man with one arm or his partner going through chemo; not the family with five kids or the bloke throwing his guitars to the curb.
None of these people who've lost everything in these cruel, relentless tides of floodwater are crying. So how dare I.
February 28, 2022, Ipswich: A young boy stands ankle-deep in water that's flooded his bedroom and tells his mother it looks like chocolate milk. Somehow, she manages to laugh. She also manages to give me an interview. In it she tells me about marks on the side of her house: from floods in 2011 (in black), 2013 (in green), 2017 (in red) and now from 2022 (in blue).
What makes 2022 different, she says, is that there isn't just one mark.
"There's a whole series," she says, telling me about how her and her boy kept looking out the window during the flood.
When she didn't see the mark the first time, she figured they'd forgotten to make it – what with the stress of losing everything. The next few times, she figured the force of the water had rubbed the marks away. So, they kept reaching out the window to make more.
But now that the water has subsided, you can see what really happened.
The marks had been swallowed by a ceaseless tide that grew higher than anyone – not us in the media, not the experts, not even these people who've lived through floods before – expected it would.
You can see, in the series of blue lines on the side of this Ipswich home, a story of something so horrible that people just couldn't believe it was true.
You want to cry, but you don't dare.
March 1, Ipswich: Streets that were yesterday covered in water and now covered in inches of stinking mud. You don't think about your boots being wrecked. It's nothing in the scheme of this tragedy – most of these people are uninsured. These piles of stained, sopping possessions – they won't get them back. They won't even be compensated for them.
You worry at first about approaching people as they're making these piles – thinking that if you were in their situation, you wouldn't want to be approached.
You needn't worry – because they call out to you. They invite you into their sodden homes. They tell you their stories. They say "excuse the mess" and your heart breaks.
They tell you about the smell of the flood, the way it doesn't wash out – not of wood or fabric or of expensive Fender Stratocaster guitars or prized China dolls. That's why there are piles of much-loved possessions on the sides of streets around south-east Queensland. It's all about starting anew.
However precious these things may be – they're not as precious as the memories of floods are horrible.
March 3, Logan: An old lady opens a photo album that she saved from the floodwater and tells me this is how she looked 40 years ago. She's wearing a summer dress and sitting with her husband on the front porch of a house.
She looks up and around. It's three days since the flood went down. Everything's still wet. A tear runs down her cheek and falls into a puddle on the floor.
She tells herself to "stop it" and that "more water won't help anything".
You wish for a moment that you could turn back time. You wish you could give her more warning of the flood. You wish you could help her save her things. But all you can do is tell a story – and hope that somehow that story can help.
I apologised to many people while I was covering the 2022 floods. I apologised for intruding, for asking for their time. I apologised for their loss.
If anyone of those people is reading this, I'll apologise again now for apologising. Instead, I should have congratulated you for your bravery, your resilience. It was a privilege to witness that firsthand. I hope our stories did that justice.
I hope you didn't see me cry.
ABC Brisbane studio evacuated
By Jessica van Vonderen, journalist, ABC News Brisbane
All of us working at the ABC feel a huge responsibility to keep communities informed during disasters like this and it became a nationwide effort as our own operations came under threat.
As the "rain bomb" exploded over Brisbane and we increased our coverage online, radio and TV, our building at South Bank, alongside the swollen Brisbane River, had to be evacuated. It's the headquarters of the ABC's digital news service, which continued to operate with staff working from home and with support from teams interstate.
The 7pm news was presented from the flood zone and co-hosted out of Perth and Sydney. Our local camera crews and journalists sent their vision to interstate stations to edit the TV stories for us.
On radio, some local presenters relocated to the Gold Coast and regional stations jumped in to keep Emergency Broadcasting services on-air, as they did in NSW when the Lismore bureau – while avoiding major flooding — lost power and its local transmitter for a period as the town went under.
Logistically, covering floods is a huge challenge. Travel was difficult – roads were cut and the news chopper couldn't get up for days because of the relentless rain.
For towns we couldn't get into, footage residents had recorded themselves helped illustrate the story. There were widespread power outages and sewage in the streets. Some of our colleagues personally suffered losses.
The extreme weather spread further south to Sydney and surrounds.
The impact is widespread and we'll be reporting on this disaster and the aftermath for a long time to come.
Covering a disaster affecting family and friends
By Cathy Border, journalist, ABC Gold Coast
Having covered numerous disasters I felt I was ready to report on the 2022 flood disaster.
It started on Sunday, March 27, with me hosting Emergency Broadcasting for southern Queensland as the "rain bomb", as the Premier labelled it, hit our region.
By the next day, I was stranded as the Tweed River broke its banks and couldn't get to work.
The low-lying village of Chinderah always floods everyone says, but you never really get used to it.
Tears and pain etched on the faces of scores of elderly residents evacuated from the caravan parks in the dead of night by random uncoordinated community volunteers. The residents had no home, no money and no idea what the future holds.
Motorists were trapped overnight on the M1 near Murwillumbah as floodwaters lapped at their cars, ringing into the ABC for help and, finally, making it to safety nearly 24 hours later because the Cudgen lifesavers launched a rescue campaign.
Communication networks failed, adding to the absolute terror.
The nurse at the evacuation centre, herself rescued, had a far-away stare after tending to others on oxygen supplies and cuts. She had a sleepless night on cardboard boxes for a bed, telling me I "looked fresh".
This disaster got personal for many of us. ABC North Coast journalist Samantha Turnbull's grandparents were stranded on the second storey balcony of their Lismore home. Good friends of mine were trapped in Murwillumbah and rescued at the eleventh hour by two tinnie angels.
Carpenters and keen fishermen, Josh and Chad Curtis, risked their own lives saving scores along Tweed River, including my friend Brett and his family.
Brett's own house is a write-off but he put that on hold, realising as the owner of two supermarkets in town, it was vital that lifeline was restored for a community that felt forgotten.
He did it within a day. Calling in favours for milk supplies but giving the bulk of it away to the local hospital and aged care centres.
10 days after the raging floodwaters hit, we did a story reuniting Brett and Leanne Bugg with their tinnie angels.
Beyond appreciative, Brett wanted to buy the Curtis fellas a boat but with no supplies settled on a year's supply of beer and fuel.
The angels had tears. They weren't expecting anything. "This is how we were raised, to help when it's needed," said Josh in disbelief.
They're all planning a fishing trip when things settle down.
Angels on the Tweed don't have wings – they have a tinnie.
