#qldfloods

Every Queenslander has a flood story.  Some more dramatic than others.  Some more disastrous than others.

We have had a fairly anxious week as we kept  an eye on the creek behind our home but there was never really reason to worry. Especially when compared to the heartbreaking, gut-wrenching images and video clips of the floods in the suburbs of Brisbane and other parts of Queensland.

The Sunshine State of Australia, to compare, is ”more than seven times the size of the United Kingdom, more than four and half time the size of Japan, around six and half times the size of New Zealand, more than five times the size of Texas.”  Absolutely mind-blowing to think seventy five percent of the state had been affected by the devastating floods.

But while there was much destruction wrought by overflowing dams and rivers, what was even more impressive was the kindness and generosity that welled and surged in response to the calamity.  Every Queenslander has a flood story, but they all don’t end in tragedy.

[At Queen Street Mall before the week of floods in Brisbane.  Interesting to compare, before and after photos of Queensland floods, January 2011]

tacet

They missed the point. There’s no such thing as silence. What they thought was silence, because they didn’t know how to listen, was full of accidental sounds. You could hear the wind stirring outside during the first movement. During the second, raindrops began patterning the roof, and during the third the people themselves made all kinds of interesting sounds as they talked or walked out.

John Cage

[It may be the blanket of pure white that deceives me.  It feels like everything goes quiet when the snow falls.  "Snowstorm" in G, January 2010]