Much has been made of the fears of the Floods reaching 1974 levels when disaster  swept through the Brisbane Valley however thanks to the lessons learnt from that event loss of life and property was dramatically reduced. Thanks to the Flood Mitigation Plan which despite massive flooding for a century was only built following the 74 by the State Builder Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen who did so on the promise that we would not see the damage to Queensland's economy and people ever again..... it seems he did a damn good job.

What needs to be said is 1974 would not be entrenched in the minds of Queenslanders if successive Governments had not continually ignored the advice to build a system of dams to lessen the effects of flooding on the highly populated south east. Massive floods enveloped Brisbane in the 1800's with levels over 8 meters which is double the level the river reached yesterday at its peak and this is thanks to proactivity on the part of governments to protect its people.

My home town of Goondiwindi was saved from 10.64m flooded MacIntyre River by the 1958 built 11m levee bank which has protected the town in every flood since. It was built when people just did what was needed to protect their community and most towns folk believe in its impregnability. However much has changed since then unfortunately the common Queenslander built high on stilts is becoming a style rather than an essential flood protection and as we have seen in other parts of the state ground built homes have been inundated by the stinking muddy waters.

Thanks to good government action the number of deaths and injuries from flooding has continued to dwindle each time we have these disasters. I can only hope that this continues to be the case and more is done to assist in the minimisation of damage done to us by floods. The Fitzroy, Condamine and Balonne are perfect examples of rivers that need flood mitigation and could in fact give rural communities greater economic opportunities just as the Wivenhoe and Somerset dams do with power generation, environmental flows and agriculture expansion. There are many towns that could be protected just as Goondiwindi is by high level levee banks and one would think there could be a possiblity of securing Brisbane's low lying suburbs with storm water drain pipe valves so they are not flooded via the drains even when protected by levees.

In my opinion much of the issues that will come out of this flood is the building of homes on ground level in flood prone areas aswell as building of important infrastructure in low lying areas such as Rocklea.... my immediate fear is for the prices people will pay in Qld and NSW for their fruit and vegetables due to both the markets inudation and the loss of crops in the fertile valleys affected. However as Anna Bligh has shown leadership akin to that of Sir Joh maybe we might have a leader that will do something about the long term approach to minimising the affects and collection of  further massive fluctuations in our rainfall.