The Clean Up Begins

The cleanup has started in Queensland from the floods as the waters continue to recede.  I just went to my local supermarket and this is what I saw.

 

 

There were no fruit and vegetables!  Nothing!  There were some nuts and coconuts, heaps of garlic and a few unripe avocados.  They were bringing out the odd thing here and there and everybody would pounce on them.  But there weren't any potatoes, pumpkins, broccoli, peas, beans, corn, carrots, oranges, apples, you name it, the shelves were bare!  And this was a massive Coles supermarket.  We do not even live in a flood affected area, but this is something that is going to affect our entire state and the whole country for some time due to over 50% of our nations fruit and vegetable crops being completely wiped out during the floods.  Our fruit and vegetable shelves are almost bare. When I was there, they came in with about 6 lettuce to add to the virtually empty shelves in the produce department.  I grabbed one of those lettuce and I have to say that it was about the size of a large grapefruit and this is what it looked like.  This is sitting on a side plate, not a dinner plate.

Now I am not complaining about the quality or the size, this poor little lettuce was probably just one of the few surviving from a flood affected area and I was happy to snap it up, but it is just so very sad, very sad for the livelihood of all of those farmers who have lost all the crops for months to come, it is a massive blow to them and their families.

I have just been sitting watching the news and seeing those now moving back to their homes to see the devastation, their family photos destroyed, all of their belongs destroyed, everything in their fridge now filled with mud and sewerage and destroyed, their fridges, ovens, furniture, kids toys, everything destroyed, homes full of mud and sewage up to the roof, everything brown and covered in mud .  It is just heart breaking to see and I just feel helpless and wish I could be there to help them.

What Is Going On With This Weather?

Well my quest to get organised has gone off track lately.  I have been very distracted by what is going on in South East Queensland, Australia.  We have had rain, rain and more rain. The weather seems to have cleared briefly but they say there may be more coming!

We have had the most extreme weather and as a result some very severe flooding.  About 80% of our state of Queensland is in flood, that's crazy!  So whilst our house has been fortunate enough to escape the flooding, friends and family have not been so lucky.

Below is one video of some of the flash flooding that swept through the city of Toowoomba.  They experienced and 8 metre wall of water, it's being called an inland tsunami.  Many have lost their lives, many of them children and many more are missing and once the flood waters have receded, sadly more of these missing people will be found.




You can see much more of the footage by doing a goggle search for Queensland Floods 2011 or Brisbane Floods and also on Youtube.com, there are lots of other videos there that will blow your mind.  Massive fast flowing rivers suddenly taking over the main street.  People didn't have any time to get out of it's way as it just came out of nowhere, taking people walking down the street, taking people in their cars and flooding business after business down the main street.

There is a massive fundraising effort going on for the massive number of people from around the state that have lost everything.
To donate visit http://www.qld.gov.au/floods/donate.html
Be very careful where you donate if you are going to, there are apparently some scams out there, the link above is the official Queensland government website, so it's legitimate.

As this massive natural disaster continues to unfold with flood waters not expected to recede until tomorrow, there is news of new towns south of Queensland now being hammered by the same weather. Aside from the absolutely tragic loss of life, homes, possessions from this flood what is also sad is that over half of our countries fruit and vegetable crops are under water and have been destroyed by the floods, OVER HALF!  It will apparently be over 8 months before this country will produce enough fruit and vegetables to supply our country again.  Between now and then we are going to have to purchase these items from overseas.  So these floods are having a knock on effect that is going affect all Australians indirectly to last for a very long time.  Cotton crops will have lost about $275 million!  They estimate that over $1 Billion dollars in grain crops and machinery have been lost in these floods, that's not even fruit and vegetables!  So this is going to have a huge impact on our country.  It is very very sad.

So this organised person has now done another clean out of the closet and playroom, finding clothes and toys and other things to donate to all of these people who have lost everything. It's a very sad time for these people and they need to be in our thoughts and our prayers to get through this incredibly difficult time.