God said to Noah, build me an ark.

In January 2011, South East Queensland experienced a flood of biblical proportions. Many lives were lost, towns were destroyed and a significant portion of Brisbane itself was under water. It made headlines around the globe.

The disaster was of a scale not previously seen in Australian history, because it decimated a very densely populated urban area. Greater Brisbane is a large, modern, highly developed metropolis and this made it particularly vulnerable to the colossal volume of water that spilled out of Wivenhoe dam over the course of several dramatic days. The scale of the devastation was not unlike that wrought upon New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina, or the damage sustained to Fukushima by the tsunami.. A big city and a lot of water are a catastrophic combination.

Our home got hit hard by the flood. At its peak, our block was under seven feet of smelly brown water. Our downstairs rooms were completely submerged - the water level stopped about a foot from the ceiling. Our upper storey, which fortunately contained most of our living areas, sat overlooking an enormous lake on all sides. It was the ultimate in riverfront living.

We were well aware that our property was at risk of flooding. At the time we bought the property, there were media reports speculating the possible effect of a one in a hundred year flood similar to that which Brisbane experienced in 1974.  We knew from the outset that, every summer, there was a one in a hundred chance that the block would get a little wet. We even engaged a valuer to determine whether we had paid a fair price for the property in view of this risk. However, as best we could predict it a one in a hundred year flood would be expected to dump a foot or two of water onto the block, and probably fall short of the level of the house itself.

For each of the first few years after we bought the property, we took out flood insurance. The premiums were pretty expensive even though the risk of flood was very low at the time. Queensland was in the grip of a prolonged drought and dam levels were dangerously low. The meteorologists called the weather pattern El Nino.  All households and businesses were subject to austere water restrictions and the prospect of a flood was far from front of mind. Some young motorists were yet to experience driving on a wet road, years after getting their driver's licence. Camilla and I made a tactical decision to drop our flood cover and save some money on our insurance premiums.

By late 2009, El Nino was gone and his sister La Nina was taking charge. The rains came. Summer was again monsoon season and many young Queenslanders witnessed their first real tropical storm. Queensland storms are spectacular displays of lightening, thunder and hail. They are as magical as they are dangerous.

In October 2010, Camilla and I reviewed our position and turned our minds to whether we should resume our flood insurance. The meteorologists were predicting a very wet Summer. We vacillated. We agonised. We decided that prudence was the better play and took out flood insurance. The premium was high, so we put it on the credit card.

For the next twelve weeks it rained almost continually. Dams filled and young drivers quickly learned how to safely manoeuvre a car on a wet road through blinding rain and hail. Children marvelled at nature's fireworks display, played encore almost every night. But Camilla and I grew worried. We checked the level of Witton Creek, about a hundred metres from our home, every time the rain got particularly heavy. It showed us that it could grow from a trickle to a torrent with alarming speed.

Then one fateful day in January 2011, it really, really began to rain. It all started in my home town of Toowoomba, which sits in the middle of an ancient volcanic crater atop the Great Dividing Range. The rain flooded the city's two gentle creeks, one of which passes through the Central Business District. They became an inland tsunami. Cars were tossed like toys and buildings destroyed. Footage of the event was beamed across the globe. We have frequently seen news vision of my cousin, Mark Fitzpatrick, pulling a victim from the thundering floodwaters. That's typical of the Fitzpatricks. Mark would not hesitate to modestly pull a stranger from peril because that's just the decent thing to do. That's the way he was raised.

The water caused substantial damage to Camilla's mother's unit, and many other properties across the City. All that water had to go somewhere, so it cascaded down the Toowoomba range and into the Lockyer Valley. It devastated Murphy's Creek, the town where my mother was born and raised. It demolished the small town of Grantham, where nearly one hundred lives were lost. The Lockyer Creek and Bremer River became walls of water. The City of Ipswich was inundated and suburbs were submerged. My cousin, Anna Costello, watched her house drown. The waters approached the roof line, I think.

The waters flowed into Wivenhoe Dam, a massive facility that had been constructed after the 1974 floods to dam the Brisbane River. The primary purpose of the dam was flood mitigation. It was to ensure that down river, in Brisbane itself, the river levels would not rise during extreme rain events to the extent they did in 1974.

Camilla and I grew nervous and we followed the news updates by the hour. The dam level at Wivenhoe exceeded the "safe" capacity of 100% and quickly filled the backup capacity such that it was approaching 200%.  It became apparent that the river was going to rise, and rise high. As was little Witton Creek. It was just a question of how high and when.

Whilst the dam was rising, nervous engineers made controlled releases of water. Just how much they released, and when, is a matter of conjecture. As is how much they should have released, and when, in compliance with the dam's operating manual and best practice. The Queensland Government has since conducted a formal flood inquiry where lawyers have spent many days presenting evidence to the Commissioner, a Supreme Court Judge, as to what actually happened, what should have happened and how it can be prevented in the future. The Commissioner has concluded that the engineers essentially collaborated and prepared documents to suggest the releases had complied with the manual, when they had not. Her Honour has accepted, however, that they still achieved close to the best practical result that the circumstances allowed.

On Tuesday, 11 January 2011, I nervously went to work. However, I spent little time working. I sat on the computer monitoring the rising floodwaters. On the basis of what I read, I still believed that we were a good chance of avoiding water on our block. By late morning, the managers of our office tower decided to evacuate the building. I was well and truly ready to leave myself, so I returned home.

By early afternoon, the signs were bad and Camilla and I began to prepare for the worst. Charlie was our priority. We were conscious of evacuating earlier, rather than later, because his autism would potentially make an evacuation difficult. Our neighbours were already loading their possessions onto trucks and Witton Creek had burst its banks and spilled across the roadway.

I walked up to the local shop to buy supplies for a few days. The shelves were nearly empty. People had panicked. Residents who were nowhere near the danger zone had raided the stores just in case. Everyone wants to personalise a drama. I was livid and bought what I could.

We made arrangements to evacuate the family to my sister's house. Shelley and her husband, Casey, live in a high part of the next suburb. Their home was well and truly safe and they graciously insisted that we stay with them. I dropped off our dogs and Camilla evacuated Imogen and Charlie.

Casey and I then set about moving some things upstairs, in case our block flooded. Neither of us thought that the residence itself would flood much, if at all. We moved the television and stereo from the rumpus room, my golf clubs and most of my wine cellar. Got to ensure the important stuff is safe!

By early evening, Witton Creek was a lake and that lake was lapping our driveway. I started to think that the residence was going to suffer some damage. The worst case scenario was becoming a reality.

I slept little that night and every few hours drove to the house to watch the waters rise. Every few hours, the waters rose a few more feet. My vantage point was pushed steadily further up the slight gradient of our street. By morning, a small crowd had gathered at the edge of the lake to watch the show. To watch my home slowly fall more deeply into the floodwaters. I hated them.

The waters rose through the day and curious objects floated around the neighbourhood. All sorts of objects. A blowup sex doll was floating in my back yard. It was incredulous and provided some light relief. I wondered whether she was local. I assure you, she is not mine!

One of my neighbours paddled a canoe across our back fence to inspect the damage at close range. All the while the waters kept rising and the news services were trying to predict the peak. The coverage of the disaster was constantly played out on every television channel in the nation. The world watched Brisbane as the drama played out minute by minute.

The next day was Wednesday. That morning, Camilla and I prayed for a small miracle. We prayed that the waters would peak just short of our upstairs floorboards. And that morning they did. By a foot. At a level about two feet below where the experts were predicting. We felt lucky. We were safe and insured.

By Thursday the waters had begun to recede and by Friday I was able to return to our home on foot.

What happened next was truly wonderful. It's a great story but you'll have to wait until my next post. It's getting late and I have a little legal stuff to do. Not that my team back of the firm really need my input. They're doing a great job without me and I now accept that, so far as our jobs are concerned, we are all expendable. Nonetheless, they appear happy to tolerate my ill-informed meddling and understand that it allows me to escape Desolation Row every now and then for a little holiday to the real world.

Until next time,