A chair hangs from the tree. Across the road, a water tank is wrapped around a telephone pole.
Inside the historic Lion’s Den Hotel, shirts left behind by decades of tourists were covered in thick brown mud, and the air was filled with the characteristic stench of floods.
Rossville, south of Cooktown, is a disaster zone that, like many small towns and communities along Queensland’s far north coast, is in dire straits after experiencing some of the worst flooding on record.
The Lions Den is one of the iconic pubs in the backcountry and there are so many memorabilia around the pub that every visitor wants to take a photo there. It has been around for 148 years, but now its future is uncertain.
Craig “Prickles” Thorne is the pub’s unofficial groundskeeper. As floods nearly submerged the old building and the entire town this week, Prickles was one of 16 locals who found themselves perched precariously on the roof of the pub and nearby Donga, desperate to get rescue.
Prickles said former Tropical Cyclone Jasper wasn’t a big deal in their area, but the torrential downpours that followed caused all the trouble.
One morning, locals woke up to water up to their necks in just 15 minutes.
Most people climbed onto the roof of Donga. Prickles and his dog were on the roof of the main bar.
“There was water all around us. It was roaring,” Prickles said.
“The power of that water is incredible.”
heroic rescue
The water level was rising rapidly, leaving them little time.
Enter Magu. Queensland’s Premier says someone owes him a beer. The Prime Minister praised his heroic deeds.
For several days he was a mysterious figure, a pilot in a small Robinson R22 rally helicopter who miraculously rescued 16 people from the roof of the Lion’s Den in the pouring rain.
Bret Little, also known as Magoo, is one of the many heroes and personalities in the state’s far north over the past week, as the remnants of former tropical cyclone Jasper brought devastating impacts from Innisfail to Cape Town’s coastline saw up to 2 meters of rain.
This is Queensland at its best and worst. whirlwind. Ordinary people doing heroic deeds. Miraculous rescue. Cairns Airport was flooded and planes were submerged. If a place doesn’t have alligators, it’s not the northernmost point in the country.
A 2.5-metre crocodile was caught in floodwaters in the center of Ingham, 115 kilometers north of Townsville.
Tragically, an 85-year-old man has gone missing in Dergara, 110 kilometers north of Port Douglas.
Remote communities hit hard
Roseville musician Gavin Dear is another person the governor says is owed beer.
Hearing that someone was trapped, he took two companions and drove a boat to the Lion’s Den area. Someone shouted “Help, help” from the tree.
The three little men rescued two men clinging to a tree as the water swirled below. One of the containers rushed past him and was almost crushed, his whole body shaking uncontrollably.
Mr Deal said it was “amazing, miraculous and biblical”.
In Degara, another boater risked his life and rescued eight others.
As of Thursday, nearly 300 people had been evacuated with the help of the military from the remote community of Wujal Wujal, 170 kilometers north of Cairns.
The elders of Ujjar had never in their lives seen anything like the wall of water that devoured their homes and towns in such a short period of time.
Coraleen Shipton drove out to check river levels at 6pm on Sunday. Water levels rose rapidly and by midnight phones were running hot, houses were flooded and people climbed onto the roof of the town health clinic.
Ms Shipton said the community had experienced flooding before but nothing like this.
“It’s been raining, it’s been raining,” she said in Cooktown, where the community has been evacuated.
Catherine Walker believes they would all have drowned if the Australian Defense Force had not come to rescue them.
She lost everything in her home, her photos, and the turkey and ham she had prepared for Christmas. Her mother and grandparents were bought in Wujal Wujal, which was her home.
“We are all strong people and we will get through this together,” she said.
Mayor misses child’s birth
Wujal Wujal Mayor Bradley Creek is grateful that everyone in the community made it out alive. Community is a word he uses often when reflecting on the past week.
It was a painful experience, but he said he needed to stay strong for the community and his people.
“Everybody takes care of everybody and comes out the other side,” Mr. Creek said. He expressed his appreciation for young people in the community who are risking their lives to help their elders.
His mood is very complicated. While he was with his family in Cooktown, his wife gave birth to a daughter in Cairns. He was not present when the child was born.
“I can’t be happy, I can’t not be sad,” Mr. Creek said of the joy of a new life in which his community had lost everything.
Just days before Christmas, the Prime Minister and Queensland Premier traveled to the region to reassure affected residents that they would not be forgotten and vowed that the government was listening to them.
Why so few warnings?
Now, as a massive clean-up ramps up in Cairns’ coastal towns and people start to count the damage, some are asking why the massive flooding that followed former tropical cyclone Jasper across the coast wasn’t covered up. Better predictions.
The BOM said there was a short lead time for the extended rainfall forecast.
So how did things come to this? A steady spell of rain has shattered a century-old flood record.
Its cause was the former tropical cyclone “Jasper”, which formed near the Solomon Islands on December 2, 2023, and made landfall in Ujjar Ujjar as a Category 2 cyclone on December 13.
This is the first cyclone named for the 2023-2024 season. Cyclone occurrence is rare in December, especially during El Niño conditions. Jasper passed through the coast, causing relatively little damage and disruption, and locals breathed a sigh of relief. The worst has not happened yet.
But this was only a short-lived relief. It rained for two days and then the flooding started.
Now Lion’s Den publican Judy Fry, one of 16 people snatched off the roof by Magoo, is back trying to clean up.
She hopes to have one of the bars open by mid-January, but admits it could take a year to get back in business.
This is an iconic building rich in history from its days as a miners’ pub. Workers would write and sign how much they spent and how much credit they had on the wall.
Ms Fry, like many people along the coast, spends the Christmas period cleaning up but is grateful for her life.
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Image Source : www.abc.net.au