South-east Queensland regions are facing significant repair bills and loss of income after relentless heavy rain over the past 10 days.
In the Wide Bay Region, 400 kilometres north of Brisbane, falls of 238 millimetres were recorded at Hervey Bay, 207 at Maryborough and 199 millimetres at Bundaberg and Mundubbera in the seven days to 9am Friday.
Murgon Gayndah Road was damaged at Cloyna in the South Burnett. (Supplied: Candice Rackemann)
The downpours, which came after heavy falls the previous week, triggered flash flooding on the already saturated ground and prompted emergency watch and act warnings.
“There’s going to be a lot of damage … we’ve had over $250,000 worth of damage easily,” South Burnett Mayor Kathy Duff said.
Kathy Duff is seeking disaster relief funding to help with the region’s recovery. (ABC Wide Bay: Brad Marsellos)
South Burnett Regional Council and Transport and Main Roads crews have been inspecting the “significant damage and disruption” to the region’s 3,000-kilometre road network.
The council had made a submission to the Queensland Reconstruction Authority (QRA) for disaster recovery funding after last week’s falls.
The joint state and federal initiative supports councils subject to certain criteria including that the cost of responding to a disaster exceeds $240,000.
Memerambi Gordonbrook Road in the South Burnett was damaged by the floods. (Supplied: Deborah Calvert)
Councillor Duff said the damage to the region’s roads over the past 10 days would be well over that amount.
“We’re going to look for support from the governments, state and federal, to try and assist us to bring the road network back to what it was,” she said.
She said QRA officials were in the region on Friday to assess damage.
A QRA spokesperson said it was working with the council and the federal National Emergency Management Agency to activate the funding.
Damage to Murgon-Gayndah Rd in the South Burnett following heavy rains and flooding. (Supplied: Transport and Main Roads)
‘Worst I’ve seen in my life’
Aside from the damage to road infrastructure, Cr Duff said farmers were doing it tough because of flood damage to their crops.
Third-generation farmer Derek Black said the rain had been “the worst I’ve seen in my life on this farm”.
Derek and Jodie Black says flooding washed away their paddocks’ topsoil. (ABC Southern Queensland: Brandon Long)
“To lose whole paddocks like we have this year has just never happened before,” he said.
“It knocks you around a bit.”
Mr Black said 112 millimetres of rain fell in a single dumping last week at the Kumbia property, about 30 kilometres south-west of Kingaroy.
He said with additional downpours this week, flooding from a nearby creek washed away topsoil from the paddocks and damaged the farm’s fences and buildings.
He said the denuded paddocks meant they would be unable to plant the summer crops of peanuts, corn, sorghum and mung beans — up to $200,000 in annual income.
Topsoil was washed away from paddocks at Derek and Jodie Black’s farm. (Supplied: Jodie Black)
“We’re staring down the barrel of not having a summer crop,” Mr Black’s wife, Jodie, said.
“It is sort of part and parcel with being on the land, you sort of get used to the ebbs and flows and unfortunately this is an ebb … it’s very disheartening.”
The couple said other growers in the region were worse affected, having already invested time and money into planting crops which were washed away.
A damaged pump shed at Derek and Jodie Black’s Kumbia farm. (Supplied: Jodie Black)
“The silver lining is we haven’t booked up all that fertiliser and all that seed and burned all that diesel,” Mrs Black said.
‘Mood is mixed’
Western Downs grazier Rebecca Cross said more than 300 millimetres of rain at her Wengenville property in the past two weeks had raised creek crossings, damaged fences and cut off paddocks for the first time in more than a decade.
Rebecca Cross says farmers are facing a heavy repair workload. (ABC Southern Queensland: Peter Sanders)
She said while many producers were happy to have the rain, the mood was mixed.
“It has made it very difficult for [farmers] because the ability to get up there and check on the welfare of their cattle, check on their fences and the roads has been really restricted,” she said.
“We’ve not had good, consistent rain for really the last 10 years so we’re really looking forward to the aquifers filling back up and having some good water around but it’s never nice to have damage.”
