Twice Bitten.... Chaos in the Adelaide Skies

Well - I  posted last week about the difficulties for air travel in Australia due to the volcanic ash from Chile... well,  as it turns out, my foiled trip to Melbourne was re-scheduled to last monday... and everything looked set for a good trip. I arrived in Melbourne early, and had a productive day - only to hear around 6pm , that flights to Adelaide were being cancelled again due to volcanic ash. Thanks Qantas and the Bureau of Meteorology for warning us!... And yes - it turned out my return to Adelaide on Tuesday evening was cancelled... and the situation was looking grim for Wednesday. Actually, it wasn't only Adelaide, by Tuesday Adelaide, Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney were all cancelled.

Faced with the prospect of an indeterminate delay in Melbourne, myself and my boss decided to take drastic measures. To drive back from Melbourne to Adelaide... a small 750 km drive away.

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We set out around 4:30pm in the afternoon (just in time for peak hour) and a short drive later we were in Adelaide. By short, I mean 1am in the morning into Adelaide. A short 8.5 hour drive (including stops for dinner and coffees)...

Now, as it turns out we most probably could have returned to Adelaide around 8pm today (only 19 hours later), but we didn't know that when embarked on our mini-adventure. Still, it was an adventure, and whilst I complain about Qantas for their lack of warning, they were reasonably good. I heard that the disruption to Qantas on monday cost about 21million alone - though that wasn't dampening their profit estimates that much.

Despite the annoyance of driving home... I have to say that I was very happy to be sleeping in my own bed on Tuesday night. Whilst I might need to go to Melbourne again in the near future - this time I'll be keeping an extra keen eye on the ash cloud (which apparently has gone around the globe twice already).

Third time, they say, is a charm.... wish me luck for the third trip!

Floods in Queensland... A Sad Start to the New Year.

In my previous post I had mentioned how we'd been suffering a drought in Australia over the last few years... and whilst there had been some major downpours in Queensland (the north-eastern state of Australia) resulting in flooding of a number of towns, nothing had prepared Queensland or Australia for the massive flooding that has taken place over the last 24 hours, and is continuing to threaten to wreak even more havoc.

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Here are a couple of youtube videos showing just some of the mayhem that grew over the course of 5-10 minutes in the small town of Toowoomba. At least 10 people have been confirmed dead, and upwards of 50-70 more people are missing. Going on how many cars, and houses, were swept away in the floods, it's quite likely that the death toll will continue to rise.

(source : whitelightbringer on youtube)

Whilst there's a tendency to trivialise these sorts of massive events when people take videos on their phones and cameras... it's often because people don't appreciate the true extent of the calamity that's unfolding... it's also a way of processing the information.

It's also a developing situation at the moment, as whilst the flooding as abated in Toowoomba itself, the massive surge of water is heading as we speak towards the capital of Queensland, Brisbane - where it is expected some 9000+ homes will be flooded.

The previous flooding in Rockhampton whilst massive was at least somewhat expected. The scale of the flooding in Toowoomba was completely unforseen, and caught the town completely unawares.

So whilst Adelaide's a long, long way from the flooding, I think we all are feeling shocked tonight at the extent of the damage, and unfortunately loss of life. This has been a shocking start to the year for Queensland, and will almost certainly have ramifications for the country for a long time to come. And there's more rain predicted to come. There's also growing flood fears for the north of New South Wales. Let's hope the worst is over.