Brisbane floods | Zoë Boccabella

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Jan 26, 2024 · 12:35 pm

The 1974 flood… 50 years on

In 1974, Nonno Anni and Nanna Francesca received a knock at the front door by two policemen warning them a big flood was coming and the power was about to be cut off…

This weekend is the 50-year anniversary of the devastating floods that hit Brisbane and Ipswich in 1974 so I thought I’d share with you just a few of the old photographs when my grandparents’ house and flats in Brunswick Street, New Farm were inundated. (An arrow shows their house. The water eventually got to the floorboards.) Top left – Nonno Anni alerts blokes in the tinny to Nanna Francesca taking a photo from the house. Below it, shows a police patrol. And I can’t help but smile seeing Nanna has her hair perfectly hair-sprayed as she hoses mud off furniture during the clean up afterwards.

It was difficult after they were gone when their house was again flooded in 2011 and we lost many of their belongings before we could get them out. But that is how it goes sometimes, the water can just unexpectedly rise too fast. Knowing the damage and terrible loss wrought on so many, we got off lightly really.

From, Joe’s Fruit Shop and Milk Bar…

Nonno Anni and Nanna Francesca both left dwellings of tile and biscuit-coloured stone – one in the mountains, the other by the sea – eventually to share their lives in a house of wood and iron not far from a river. I recall Nonno Anni telling me about the clean up after the 1974 flood. How a lot had to be thrown out or burnt, and weeks afterward they finally located an enduring stench as being a dead fish wedged in the back of a cupboard.

Being a toddler at the time, I have no memories of Brisbane’s ‘74 flood during which the water came higher, and my mother afterwards donated my baby clothes to flood victims. Yet, from childhood, I was fascinated to pore over photographs of the event – my father and Nonno Anni in the floodwater in the front yard, Nanna Francesca peering from the front doorway, refusing to come lower than the top step. In one photograph, Nonno Anni is in the water, waving to an overloaded tinny of longhaired, young people rowing along Brunswick Street. They cheerfully wave back to him.

Joe’s Fruit Shop and Milk Bar

A decade on from the flood…

Floodwater creeping up Brunswick Street, New Farm. 2011

The tenth anniversary of the 2011 Brisbane floods has crept up on me in a way, like the floodwater as we tried to save things from my grandparents New Farm house. It’s still hard to believe how the water rose so deceptively fast. And not just from the river breaching its banks but up road drains and inside houses up sinks and toilets.

Brunswick Street not long after.

Those familiar with what I wrote of it in, Joe’s Fruit Shop and Milk Bar know much was lost, including what remained of my grandparents’ possessions. While my home wasn’t impacted, I find I’m still affected by the floods I saw a decade ago. I still cry. For the 36 lives lost, three of those people never found. For those who had to climb onto their roofs to be rescued, for all the animals lost. And not only those affected in Brisbane but people in Ipswich, in Toowoomba, Grantham and its surrounds where they faced without warning an inland tsunami. For all those impacted that 2011 summer when Queensland had a flood incredibly, the size of France and Germany combined.

Top: New Farm (arrow shows my grandparents’ house). Bottom: Rocklea Markets, where Nonno Anni would go each day for produce for his fruit shop and milk bar. Courtesy, ABC.

Returning to my grandparents’ house after the flood, I recall being stunned and quiet on the outside yet my heart beating fast. I can still smell the grey-black mud the flood left in its wake. Anyone who smelt it will know that almost primal, earthy smell, mixed with acrid chemicals and an overlay of death and decay. To see it covering my grandparents’ lounge suite and Nanna Francesca’s ‘good’ cabinet that still contained glassware and crockery we didn’t have time to save is a sight I’ll never forget.

The first two photos are my own and show the floodwater creeping up the footpath toward my grandparents’ house and then their part of Brunswick Street soon after. The others are courtesy of the ABC and are before and after the flood.

This anniversary will be very hard for so many people and my heart goes out to them. Yes, time passes. Experiences become less raw. Yet, they’re not forgotten. The resilience of people in the face of grief and loss moves me the most. When it doesn’t matter if rich or poor, or any of those other labels that often can divide us, all put aside when people come together to help each other. I hope we never lose that.

Top: Milton. Bottom: Fairfield. Courtesy, ABC.

Top: Ipswich. Bottom: Lang Park, Milton. Courtesy, ABC.