Our Town is Flooding...

Floods seem to occur on a cycle here about every 10 years. This is the first one we have experienced - and boy has it been sudden! Sure we've had lots and lots of rain over the past few weeks / months, but during last night the Mary River rose and rose and rose and this morning we all woke up to flooded streets, closed bridges, and hundreds of residents driving around and photographing some amazing sights. Including us. ;)

For your interest, and my own personal record of what could be the biggest flood we ever see in our town.

Approaching one of the bridges that has gone under, with dozens of other interested people

The bridge is under all that water somewhere. :) You can see little bits of the white side rail sticking up

We drove down a little side road until we reached water. You can just see the top of the street sign of one of our major roads here

This is another parkland. The white thing is the top of the Train Station for our historic steam train which runs through the park several times a month. The track is completely underwater

More of the watery train track

The Sailing Club and Theatre

(Theatre will be fine, Sailing Club... not so much)

Our beautiful main park, totally underwater

A major intersection outside Woolworths, our grocery store. On the left of the photo you can see the water flooding into the undercover carpark

The same intersection from the other side

The poor sailing club :(

The scariest part is that the river is sitting around 8m at the moment, but is set to rise even further in the next 24 hours due to continued rain on the catchment area. They're looking at a peak of 9 - 9.9 m by tomorrow morning. And the forecast for the next several days? Rain.

Thankfully we live out of town on a high hill, far above the flood zones. During some downpours yesterday 9 sections of road were covered in water between town and our place, but still low enough to drive through. Praying hard and hoping for some sunshine soon!