Floods in Queensland, Australia

[DoubtfulMiracle]

My home state of Queensland has been battling pretty big floods for the last few weeks. My city has been spared the worst of it so far, although flash flooding is forecast for later in the week. I can honestly say I've never seen rain like this before in my lifetime, but even still some of the stats are just staggering:

• Over the last week, an amount of water equivalent to three Sydney Harbours has been flowing through the town of Rockhampton every day.

• Today, the town of Dalby is preparing for its fifth flood since December 20.

• The total flood area is larger than France and Germany combined. For US Ledgies, it is larger than the state of Texas; for other Aussie Ledgies, it is larger than the state of NSW.

• 17 evacuation centres have been set up around the state, catering for 1000s of evacuated residents. Theodore and Condamine were evacuated completely, the first time in the state's history whole towns have been evacuated.

• Over 200 000 people in 22 towns and cities are affected.

• The damage bill so far is estimated to be $5 billion.

Unfortunately, things looks like getting worse before they get better. More people are being urged to evacuate from areas just outside of the city and there were huge flash-floods today in Toowoomba, a town a couple of hours west of Brisbane. It is up a mountain range for freak's sake, so you know things are bad. There is some amazing footage on YouTube of the water flowing through the town centre - it was a fierce torrent, tossing cars and shipping containers around like they were Matchbox toys.

Today was actually the first time the floods really got to me. It's been mind-boggling watching the news, and I don't know how all these people further north have kept themselves from throwing in the towel, drowning their sorrows with quite a few beers and hoping things will be fixed when they wake up. The water, the mud, the smell, all their lost possessions - it's heart-breaking.

But the floods in Toowoomba today came with very little warning, and the news footage was very hard to take - a distraught woman who couldn't save two of her horses, and a family of three on top of a car caught in the water. Their faces were blurred out and their fate wasn't revealed, and I suspect it's because they didn't make it. We're now up to at least 11 confirmed deaths, and I'm sure there will be more. And I can only imagine how many animals, particularly livestock, have been lost.

If anything, I always get a wry smile out of Mother Nature. When she puts on a show, she makes it worthwhile. Less than two years ago, we were in a crippling drought. Our dam levels were dangerously low, we were on incredibly tight water restrictions and we were all doing our bit to save water - buying new water-saving appliances, putting in rain water tanks, watering our gardens only at our rostered times, and sticking timers in our showers to make sure we didn't go over two minutes. That sure seems like a long time ago now.