Murphy's Law

Congestion on the range.

I've begun to appreciate the knock-on effects of the mad weather since spending the last three days in Brisbane.

It's only been the last three days that Brisbane has been accessible from Toowoomba. Since last Tuesday, the Warrego has been closed. There were landslides on the range, flooding at the Western end at Withcott, and also halfway to Brisbane at Glenore Grove, and closer to Ipswich at Goodna.

The final barrier was inundation around Rocklea. It went down on Saturday night. 

Travelling to Brisbane on Sunday, the road was better than I had expected, as Main Roads has very sensibly used the period of closure to resurface long sections, particularly between Helidon and Withcott. The left lanes on this part of the road were in a dangerous state and plenty of people who were either careless or couldn't be bothered slowing down have learned the hard way about the weaknesses of stylish low profile tyres in combination with alloy wheels.

I've been talking to a few tyre repairers lately, but more of that later.

The alloys are strong, but you can't bash them back into shape in the same way you can steelies. Much of this section is repaired, but still has an 80 kph limit. You'd be stupid to drive any faster.

Large sections of countryside especially around Withcott and Helidon have been inundated, and whilst I know this road like the back of my hand, there were times I lost track of where I was because of how much of the landscape has been altered.

I was on the road to Brisbane because I was helping my son and daughter shift house. The floods have put a meataxe through their plans.

Flooded rubbish at Yeronga.

Together with two other students they had been leasing a place in Yeronga which they were due to vacate last week. The landlord wants to sell, so they couldn't renew, and my daughter has had enough of Yeronga anyway after she was assaulted on the way home from a night shift in March last year. She no longer felt safe there. My son had a casual job at a nearby supermarket which helped defray expenses as he studied. The supermarket was completely inundated,  won't be reopened possibly for months, and in the short term his job's gone.

Each had organised new accommodation - my daughter at Red Hill and my son at Fairfield. Finding accommodation is a difficult process for students who don't own a car, are perpetually broke (despite part-time work) and actually getting all the paperwork together to apply for an accommodation lease is a complicated process.

Anyway, it all became irrelevant after 11^th January, as the new accommodation disappeared - in each case - under brown muddy water. Their stuff was high and dry at Yeronga, despite flooding very close to them, and the worst that happened to them was loss of electricity when things got interesting on Tuesday night. They were more fortunate than many of their friends who now have no accommodation, no furniture, and not much money to get back on their feet.

Still, they were confronted with the problem of getting their gear stored until they could organise alternative accommodation. The flood put a bomb under the Brisbane rental market, so this search has suddenly become twice as difficult. Historically, students stay in share houses at the bottom end of the rental market. Generally, cheap properties, close to U of Q are low-lying.

So the available rental space has shrunk - like a pair of jeans, it's affected by water. And there are more people looking - many who have been flooded out.

I invoked the very effective family Mafia - being the eldest of six has some advantages - and borrowed brother-in-law's Ute. Number 2 sister offered to put daughter up temporally and son was offered a corner in a large and disorganised share house by friends. He's easy going and will live anywhere with internet access.

We got busy moving furniture and boxes to an industrial storage (carefully chosen on high ground) after initially having difficulty finding space not already booked - suddenly there are thousands of people in Brisbane looking for temporary storage.

Unfortunately, to get to this storage at McGregor, we had to drive through all the devastation around Yeronga and Rocklea, and this added great chunks of time to the journey. It was impossible to plan a route avoiding it, as each time I drove between Yeronga and McGregor, the route changed. A muddy looking character in either Jungle Green or Police Blue would put his hand up and say - "You can't go through there, mate". A one-day shift turned into three days.

By yesterday evening the shifting was over, the unit cleaned, offspring in their new (temporary) accommodations, and I set out to drive back to Toowoomba.

Murphy intervened. It stormed. There were nasty fast-moving microbursts that uprooted trees, knocked out electricity supplies, and caused traffic chaos. The car (Ford Focus) was loaded to the gunwales with daughter's assorted paraphernalia, including 3 Ukuleles (she collects them), a large bag of rice with a hole in it, a very flimsy but attractive desk lamp, and many bags of clothes for St Vincent's in Toowoomba.

Included were also her gumboots (see image). She bought them at "Splendour in the Grass" this year when it got muddy.

There were also two laundry baskets filled with perishables and a very large beach umbrella, as well as a vacuum cleaner. It's amazing what you can get into a small car if you pack carefully. Caution needs to be exercised , as the pressure builds up and stuff erupts when you open the doors.

So it took an hour to get out of Brisbane because of the storm, and the Ipswich Motorway was a parking lot.

This turned out to be a good thing, as when the front tyre went down; it wasn't destroyed because I was just crawling along.

I was also lucky to have the puncture in a section wide enough to stop safely. I needed lots of space, because all the gear in the boot had to be unloaded on to the side of the road. It must have looked like some lunatic was running a garage sale on the roadside. The other piece of good luck was that the rain had stopped.

So I changed the tyre, and put the dinky little get-you-home spare on the front offside wheel. This wheel looks like something off a wheelbarrow, and the car handled exactly like an old barrow with it on the front. The German designer who thought up this system obviously didn't have the Warrego Highway, stormy weather and a car full of stuff in mind. The punctured tyre took up lots more space than the get-you-home spare and this added to my problems.

I made the decision to take the spooky tyre off the front (driving wheel in the Focus) and put it on the rear. On front drive cars  the rear wheels just go along for the ride if you get my drift. You can't get two wheels off the ground with the jack supplied in the Focus, so this meant three lots of jacking - work it out.

The rain had started up again, but I found a space in a covered parking space at a service station. Unfortunately, someone had, a few days previously, dumped a package of prawn heads about two metres upwind. This didn't improve my mood, although the odour blended well with the car which smelt of floodwater after three days in and around Yeronga. My daughter will be wondering why her gear pongs like off prawns.                                                                                                                                                                            

Gumboots and spooky wheel.

Much bad language and bleeding later (your skin gets brittle at my age) the job was done, and I was off at a steady 80 kph. The big sticker on the spare reminding me of this was looking a bit grotty by this time, but I was feeling relaxed and comfortable, because the car was driving a lot better.

Just outside of Withcott I saw a flashing sign saying "Severe congestion on range".

It was severe - see photo. It took another hour to get up the range, as the combination of a B Double breaking down and a landslide or two had complicated matters somewhat. The range crossing was a parking lot. Eventually things freed up and I meandered home.

So the one and a half hour journey had taken four hours. A glass of red and a 9.30pm dinner helped me contemplate the aftermath of the floods, and understand that whilst my family had been stuffed around somewhat, at least we still had beds to sleep in, cars to drive, and we were all safe.

There are twenty or so people in South East Queensland who have lost their lives, thousands who have lost their homes and businesses, and the knock-on effects will continue for years.

No doubt I'll see a different aspect of all this when I set out for Roma tomorrow. I have to drive through both Dalby and Chincilla, both recovering from record flooding.

Birdstrike

I couldn't resist posting this. You can find it on Plane Talking.

Not much comment is necessary, except perhaps to note that I've landed on strips like this without hitting big chooks - I have hit a few whilst driving.

They have no brains at all (the Emus - not the people on the plane).

Warning - best watched with headphones on, especially if you're at work or in the presence of people who are easily offended.

Talk on Corners

Years ago, my bride and I spent some time in Ireland.

One of the differences we noted between the way people connected here in Oz, and on the streets of Irish towns and villages was "craic" or talk on corners.

In Ireland, particularly the South, people gather on the corner of the street, and just yarn - often about nothing in particular. It does happen here, to a much more limited extent, and hardly ever in towns or cities. It's more a bush phenomenon.

Since the floods, that seems to have changed, in Toowoomba at least.

People are talking on corners, in newsagents, at the post office and in shopping centres. Generally, they're swapping yarns about what they were doing and what happened to them when the flash flood went through. Many long-held beliefs about this city were eliminated in a few minutes.

As someone said to me yesterday - "You don't expect to be at risk of drowning when you head off to do some shopping.

I guess people are taking comfort in the simple things - talk on corners.

Methinks they doth protest too much.....

Australian conservative bloggers, including Bolt and Blair, have been very busy lately with trenchant criticism of mainstream media connecting the rise of extremist rhetoric with the Tucson shootings.

Where they maintain that there is no obvious connection, I agree with them.

But there is a toxic political climate in the USA - or more correctly, a toxic culture.

The dictionary definition of "culture" is "a medium for growth". The metaphor is a petri dish in which an organism is introduced to help that organism grow and develop. The culture is the material in that dish which allows the organism to grow.

Let's take a look at the composition of that media culture.

First, there's the mainstream media. They haven't changed or developed much in the last five years, except to use different forms of technology to market their material. There is a range of opinion across this media, and generally, it's balanced.

The next level is the corporatized opinionista. Generally, this segment makes their money out of advertising which is directly related to internet hits and radio ratings. To increase your hits and ratings, you need to post or broadcast something that is on the outlandish end of the opinion spectrum.

Hence the term "shock-jock".

Here, and in the USA, they're generally to the right of the political spectrum. In the USA, amongst others, there are Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. Here, we have Alan Jones, notorious for his barracking around the time of the Cronulla riots.

Cronulla is a text book example of an immediate response to inflammatory rhetoric.

For examples of this kind of rhetoric across the Pacific, it's instructive to read a small selection of material broadcast recently.

Glenn Beck - 

"I'm thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I'm wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. ... No, I think I could.


"I think there is a handful of people who hate America. Unfortunately for them, a lot of them are losing their homes in a forest fire today."

Rush Limbaugh -

"What better way to head off more oil drilling, nuclear plants, than by blowing up a rig? I'm just noting the timing, here."


"The only way to reduce the number of nuclear weapons is to use them."

There's plenty more where that came from.

I've included some images, as they tend to be more powerful than words.

It's patently obvious that this rhetoric and imagery contributes to a culture where all bets are off when it comes to civility, but it goes further than that. The metaphors and images used are frequently violent and give the impression the rule of law no longer applies. It's easy to gain the impression that you're free, as a citizen, to take matters into your own hands.

Most people let this wash over them. There are always a few who don't.

People like Bolt and Blair who make a living out of whipping up hysteria to increase hits are free to do so, but they have a heavy responsibility.

It's time they recognised this, and pulled their heads in before we see the same kind of incident on this side of the Pacific.

Generally, (and unfortunately) trends in the USA are picked up here. Hopefully, our national psyche is fundamentally sane, but anything's possible.

Three days on...

 What the people from this part of the world have experienced during the last few days is, for most, unprecedented.

A situation like this puts attitudes values and perceptions through a blender.

The difference between the way my Gen Y kids and their friends see this, in comparison with those of my generation who went through the 1974 flood is obvious.

Two of my kids are marooned in Yeronga. They're quite safe, But the water is close, and were without power for most of last night when the river was coming up.

They had omitted to organize torches, batteries, radios etc, so weren't too comfortable. They also (in typical fashion) had very little food in the house. With the only accessible shopping centers closed, they were not only uncomfortable but hungry. They have a BBQ but no gas.

Maybe this has been a learning experience......

My wife and I generally prepare for this kind of emergency almost without thinking about it. Being brought up in FNQ* where cyclones and floods are routine may have something to do with it. By the time I was 10 I'd been through two tropical cyclones, one of which destroyed the house we were living in. You learn from these things.

It's frustrating to watch the unfolding tragedy and being unable to help. I spent hours trying to register as a volunteer yesterday, but the website had crashed, and the phone was engaged all day. In the end I was able to get involved unofficially through a veterans' network. Anything I do will have to be local in the short term, because we're cut off on in all directions.

This was a major contrast with the way it was in 1974, when I jumped on the back of a truck and spent three days cleaning up flooded properties in St Lucia. They didn't have many plaintiff lawyers back then.

I was lucky not to get caught up in Monday's flash flood in town here. Just before it happened I set out to drive to Garden Town, a shopping centre which was inundated. Because of the pelting rain I decided to pick up the stuff at a local corner store instead. By the time I'd finished my shopping, the roads were turning into torrents, so I headed for high ground, parked the car and listened to the radio until it was safe to drive home. Lots of people in downtown Toowoomba weren't so lucky. Two days later, local tow truck operators were working 24 hour shifts salvaging cars that had been washed away.

We're facing shortages here now. Because the roads are closed, no trucks are getting through, so milk and bread is almost unobtainable, and fuel is being rationed.

Many of the schools I work in west of here are marooned - some are being used as emergency centers. Not one of the places I work in has not been flooded. What makes this flood different is that it's not confined to one specific area. Every single river system (whether flowing west or east) is in record-breaking flood. Some places (Dalby and Condamine for example) have been inundated for the second time in two weeks.

Despite my grizzling about Gen Y, they seem to have retained the qualities that are characteristic of Australians when things get tough. My eldest son spent yesterday helping mates in Fairfield get their stuff out before the water came. There were young people filling sandbags all over the place in Brisbane yesterday.

Generally people have been cheerful and optimistic. The cleanup will be of epic proportions and will require perseverance as well as optimism.

It will also cost megadollars.

* Far North Queensland

Chaos

Toowoomba city - this afternoon. (Caution - strong language)

I was at a shopping centre only one kilometre from where I live, but by the time I realised what was happening, it was too late, and I was cut off.

I spent the next two hours waiting for the water to recede before I could get home.

The city is in chaos, and emergency services are overwhelmed. I've never seen rain like it. The pressure of the downpour was so great that it blew the top off our rain gauge.

I'm supposed to be helping my daughter shift house tomorrow in Brisbane - unlikely, as the Warrego is blocked by landslides at the top of the range and flooded creeks at the bottom.

More video on the ABC.

Apple Pie

Political assassination is as American as apple pie.


The video posted above provides a contextual insight.


I remember being woken by my father on 22nd November 1963 to be told that John Kennedy had been shot.


Dad was very upset - he was an admirer of Kennedy, as much as anything else because there was a Catholic in the White House.


Then on June 5th 1968, my 21st Birthday, as a young teacher in Goondiwindi who was awaiting my National Service medical, I heard the news of Bobby Kennedy's assassination.


I've never understood why the incidence of political murder has provided such ghastly but regular punctuation to American political history, but after watching this video, I have a better idea.


It has very fertile ground available stateside.


It doesn't happen only in the USA, of course, there was an attempt on the life of Arthur Calwell, federal opposition leader in this country, back in 1966 when he had finished addressing an anti-conscription rally in Mossman, Sydney.


But this phenomenon has been monotonously regular on the other side of the Pacific -


1865 - US President Abraham Lincoln dies after shooting by John Wilkes Booth


1963 - JFK assassinated


1964 - US civil rights leader Martin Luther King shot in Miami


1968 - Bobby Kennedy assassinated


1972 - US presidential candidate George Wallace shot and paralysed


1981 - John Hinckley Jr. fires six shots at US President Ronald Reagan


2011 - Congresswoman Gabby Gifford shot in Arizona


The American media has gone mad with the usual recriminations and questioning. Blot and Blair have been furiously covering their backsides.


There is a simple answer to the "why?" question. It's the consequence of a combination of unregulated gun ownership, a tendency towards religious fundamentalism, and a plethora of radio shock jocks who deal in hate to make a living - much in the same way as Blair and Bolt.

There are about 2% of the American population who react to this drip-feed of anti-government rhetoric, and we see the result.

Fortunately, we don't have all the ingredients to the recipe available in this country. Give it time…..