Burdekin River – Queensland Stories

Floods.

I’ve written many stories about many parts of Queensland on this blog, and so many of them describe floods.

Maryborough, Ipswich, Rockhampton. https://roseobrienwriter.blog/2024/02/06/maryborough/

Townsville, Bundaberg, Ingham, Charleville. https://roseobrienwriter.blog/2021/07/24/road-trip-to-ingham/

The Brisbane, Bremer, Mary, Burdekin and Flinders Rivers. https://roseobrienwriter.blog/2020/12/12/syphoning-petrol/

The Gulf Country, the Horror Stretch and the Cassowary Coast. https://roseobrienwriter.blog/2018/11/08/horror-stretch/

These are places I know well, and I feel for the people who live and work there; especially in the north. People wading through the ruins of their flood-damaged homes; cane, banana and beef farmers coping with the ruination of their hard-won livelihoods.

I remember the cattle farmers of the Flinders River catchment who, during the 2019 floods waited helplessly for the waters to go down as helicopters brought back images of mobs of cattle, including precious breeding herds and cows with calves, dead of cold and hunger, crowded against fences and on small patches of higher ground. It is estimated that 500,000 head of stock died in that flood.

And now floods have happened again – are still happening – in tropical Queensland. The State premier, an Ingham native, holds a press conference describing the community’s sorry situation: highway cut both north and south, houses flooded, no electricity, a breakdown in the water supply, supermarkets empty, and two lives lost. Further north, in and around Cardwell, houses flooded that have never been flooded before.

The Herbert River catchment of 9000 square kilometres has its headwaters in the Great Dividing Range near Herberton, and it collects a lot of tropical rain before it makes its way down to the flat canefields around Ingham. The Cardwell Range is steep and high and close to the town, so the catchment there is not nearly as big. But what is going to happen, when almost two metres of rain falls in three days?

The Burdekin River catchment of over 130,000 square kilometres is the size of England and stretches from north of Charters Towers and Greenvale to south of Alpha. Charters Towers has been flooding all week, and that water is heading for Ayr and Home Hill on the coast.

Burdekin River at Home Hill in the dry season, looking upstream from the Bridge

Burdekin River at Home Hill this week *Dale Last, Member for Burdekin. Facebook*

Sugarcane can be laid low by a flood, and recover, if the water doesn’t lie there too long. On the rich flood plains around Ingham, water has been lying for days, and still it rains.

An agriculturist, an expert in banana growing, told me that in the case of a cyclone, if a farmer lops the plants back they will survive and regrow. How would you go about that? It would take days, and a huge amount of work, and even with excellent modern forecasting, satellites and radar, cyclones are unpredictable. They can veer south or north or move back out to sea.

More heavy rain is forecast across North Queensland. The water will run to the coastal towns and farms and also to the vast plains of the inland, where rivers like the Flinders will break their banks and spread across the land, cutting the few sealed roads and the one railway line that runs east-west across the State.

In Queensland, rich in resources though it is – agriculture and mining in particular – we don’t have many people. The US state of Texas, iconic to Americans for its size, has an area of 697,000 square kilometres, compared to Queensland’s over 1,700,000 square kilometres. However, Texas has a population over five times the size of Queensland’s. That makes a huge difference when it comes to tax base and industry. It seems we don’t have the population, or the votes, to create better, more resilient transport infrastructure.

We also have a more extreme climate than Texas, especially when it comes to floods. Tornados are deadly, but they move quickly across the land. Rain depressions hang around.

Queensland has only one highway and one railway going along the coast, and because of shortage of population and extremes of climate, there are almost no entirely sealed roads west of the ranges linking north and south.

During this month’s major flood event in North Queensland, the one main railway line was soon cut in several places. https://www.railexpress.com.au/rail-bridges-submerged-as-floods-batter-north-queensland/

When the Bruce Highway bridge at Ollera Creek was washed away over the weekend, north of Townsville, Far North Queensland was cut off from the world except by air and sea.

Ellora Creek bridge washed away *Townsville Bulletin*

Ellora Creek bridge , as repaired by the army for emergency vehicles *mypolice.qld.gov.au*

Trucks carrying supplies to the Far North and people trying to return home faced an extra 1200 kilometres’ journey, travelling by western Queensland sealed roads, to reach Cairns. And these roads are under threat of closure at any time. Many are stranded. https://qldtraffic.qld.gov.au/

Alternative route to flooded Far North Queensland *Transport and Main Roads Department*, bigrigs.com.au

Stranded truckies parked up at the Puma Roadhouse in Charters *(Towers)* *Image: Deano Hutch* *bigrigs.com.au*

If the continuing flood rain results in damage to the railway and highway linking Townsville and Mount Isa, as happens all too often, transport and supply of essential goods may be affected for weeks.

For all sorts of reasons, including strategic concerns, the continuing and increasing vulnerability of Queensland’s transport routes is a major threat to our way of life and security.

People who live and work in the north and west of the State feel bitter that regions that produce so much of Queensland’s wealth continue to be so vulnerable to the weather. And as climate change deepens, it will only get worse.

It’s a worry.

In the southern states and Canberra, people have always regarded Queensland with a kind of affection as a weird, distant place, a place of extreme weather, crocodiles, bogans and dodgy politicians. Greater Brisbane makes up half the population of the State, and a lot of Brisbane people seem to be largely ignorant of regional areas. To them, north means Noosa, and west means Toowoomba.

So where is the will to sink vast sums into flood-proofing North Queensland for the future? Bipartisanship in politics would be a start.

It’s a start. Federal Labor Senator Jenny MacAllister, Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, and LNP Premier of Queensland David Crisafulli, taling about recovery in FNQ *theaustralian.com.au*

I’m tired of writing about floods.

Main picture: Maryborough flooded at Sunset. 2022 Qld Reconstruction Authority

We drive north through Home Hill, past Inkerman Sugar Mill and up on to the steel framed Burdekin Bridge.

We’ve been across this impressive road and rail bridge, one of the longest multi-span bridges in the country, many times, by both train and car. We’ve looked upstream from the train, across sand flats where the local lads drive doughnuts in the sand and flocks of birds wheel in the air. We’ve driven across in the car, as we’re doing today, hoping not to meet a wide load coming in the opposite direction.

Now, for the first time, I notice that there is a walkway along the eastern, downstream side.

I am fond of infrastructure, Con less so; but he is tolerant of my whims, knowing that they often lead us to interesting places. At the northern end of the bridge, we turn right across the highway and follow a dirt track down to the base of the bridge. A steep set of stairs leads up to the walkway, which extends all the way over the river. Catching my breath after the climb, I stand and look down at the stream below, shining in the sun.

burdekin downstream — Looking downstream from the Burdekin Bridge, towards the delta

The Burdekin River bed is a kilometre wide here, not far from the delta. The river drains the second largest catchment in Australia, and its floods are legendary. Today, as is normal in the dry season, the water is meandering across an expanse of sand and sparse vegetation. Below where I’m standing, it’s running through a channel just fifty metres wide. Wooden stumps mark the site of the old rail bridge downstream.

Trains used to cross the river on that low bridge. Old photos show them steaming through shallow floodwaters, the track invisible under them. The road crossing went directly over the sand and across a causeway even lower than the rail bridge. Every wet season, floods would cut both road and rail, leaving North Queensland isolated.

In 1945, a wave coming downstream washed an entire freight train off the tracks. Two years later work began at last on the present Burdekin Bridge, one of North Queensland’s most ambitious pieces of infrastructure. Just forty-six metres shorter than the Sydney Harbour Bridge, it took ten years to build, its caissons sinking thirty metres into the delta sands.

By November 1956, when the Olympic Torch Relay came to the Burdekin on its way south, the new bridge still wasn’t completed. It was the beginning of the wet season, and the road crossing was flooded. The Torch and runner crossed the river by train, before dawn, the engine driver blowing his whistle the whole way.

Burdekin Bridge last Sunlander (lower burd histl soc)

Con was a boy in 1957 when the new Burdekin Bridge was opened. It was a huge event for North Queenslanders, and he remembers it. “Until then, every wet season, North Queensland was cut off by road and rail. When the old bridge was twenty feet under floods, all kinds of food, clothing, newspapers, magazines and produce bound for the far North sat on the south bank of the Burdekin until the water went down.”

It was the magazines that hurt the most.

“I missed out on my boys’ magazines, Champion and Hotspur. They were supposed to come up on the train from Brisbane.

“One year, my mum didn’t get her Women’s Weekly until Easter!”

The Burdekin Bridge carries one set of train lines and two narrow lanes of road traffic. When a long wide load crosses, carrying transportable housing or a steel bucket for the mines, police have to stop the on-coming traffic.

“It’s crazy. They should build another one beside it,” say the locals. “Like they did with the Gateway Bridge in Brisbane. They won’t, though – all the money goes down south.”

That’s an old cry for North Queenslanders, and it’s difficult to disagree.

Even though this high bridge doesn’t flood, many sections of road and railway north and south of here still do, every wet season, in spite of all the improvements made over the years.

Living in North Queensland is never going to be as easy as living in Kenmore or Maroochydore. There, you never have to miss the Women’s Weekly.

Tag: Burdekin River

Floods

Burdekin Bridge

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