Restaurant owner Tai Lam peers nervously at the brown tide lapping toward his full dining tables, and hopes he will still have a business when floodwaters finally recede.
“I’m very nervous, I must admit,” Lam said, watching the muddy Fitzroy River rushing just 1m below his customers.
“It’s just the uncertainty, no one knows when it its going to peak,” he said.
PHOTO: AFP
Lam’s Saigon by the River boasted the best river frontage in town before the floods, with a circular open-air balcony offering an enviable view.
But Saigon in the River is now rather more apt, with the Fitzroy more than doubling in height in recent days, leaving just the tips of lamp posts, trees and a tin roof visible where a picnic area used to be.
“A lot of people come here because it’s very exciting; it’s like they’re sitting on a cruise and enjoying their lunch, but the seat doesn’t move,” waiter Steven Tran said with a laugh.
“When they go home they say ‘we’ll be back,’ and actually, they do,” Tran said.
The river would have to rise significantly for Lam’s restaurant to be inundated, but he has 30 sandbags ready just in case.
“That’s the worst-case. Hopefully this is it,” he said.
Waters continued their slow creep into the main streets this week, lapping at the gutters and sandbagged doors of some businesses and oozing up storm drains. Helicopters thundered overhead, dropping food and medicine to isolated properties.
People were taking running leaps over a channel of sludge to get to the post office on the mostly shuttered East Street, and there was a steady stream of people looking at the river gauge, which nudged just above 9.2m.
All indications were that the peak had been reached, 0.2m short of predictions and below the records set in 1991, 1954 and 1918.
Local construction worker Dennis Tysoe, 63, squinted in disbelief as he watched the river roar past — at a rate of seven Olympic swimming pools every second, police said.
“I’ve seen some cattle go down there and I’ve seen a fridge go through before,” Tysoe said. “I reckon it has to be 50km an hour, and they’re saying the water underneath is going faster than the water on top.”
“People just don’t realize how much country this bloody river drains,” he said.
Tysoe spent the past week shoring up the Rockhampton rubbish tip with masses of dirt to stop garbage spilling into the deluge.
“We don’t want anything busting through there,” he said.
Tysoe lived through the town’s storied 1954 and 1991 floods, but said he wouldn’t be surprised to see this one go higher.
“What they’re saying now about the 10 days [under water] here, I quite believe that ‘cause there’s still a lot of water to come down and it’s spread out that wide now, it’s unbelievable,” Tysoe said.
Newsagent Lance McCallum also lived through the town’s earlier big floods, and said he kept his doors open on sheer gut instinct, hoping his business — Lucky Daniel’s — would hold true to its name.
“We just put this up as a precaution, and the only reason I did it is because of my wife, she’s just about lost her head,” said McCallum, 64, waving at a pile of sandbags just inside the door.
“I understand people want to be cautious, you’ve got to be, but this is the lowest part of Rocky. You’ve only got to pee in the bloody [river] and it floods,” he said.
Lucky Daniel’s is the only store that is open in a sea of sandbagged properties, but McCallum said only one thing worried him: forecasts of more rain.
“If we get two or three inches [5cm to 7.5cm] in an hour, that’ll be a big problem,” he said, glancing at the sky.
“You could build a rock wall [around the river], but the water’s coming up through the bloody stormwater drains,” he said.
Down on the riverfront, Lam agrees.
“I think everyone’s just praying no more rain, no more water,” he said.
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