Picking Up The Pieces

By Justin Robertson 

An Indonesian couple is among the victims of Australia’s devastating floods.

On his hands and knees, Harry Bhaskara pulls an exposed nail out of the floorboard; it’s one of many lined up in a row. His wife, Melanie, scrubs furiously at a stubborn dry patch of dirt on the wall.

They are working in their empty weatherboard house, where milk crates have replaced couches and cardboard boxes serve as makeshift tables. The overpowering stench of wet carpet clogs the air and the kitchen bench is cluttered with paper towels, cleaning detergents and other miscellaneous products.

Every day for the past three weeks, the Bhaskaras have commuted more than two hours by train and then bus to their battered home in Goodna, a small town 20 kilometers southwest of Queensland’s capital city Brisbane. The town has been decimated by the flooding that State Premier Anna Bligh declared was the worst natural disaster Australia has experienced.

An inland deluge that started in Toowoomba – a town 110 kilometers west of Goodna – created flash flooding and sent a deadly torrent of water rushing into the Brisbane River. The waters swept people off their feet, cars down city streets and houses off their foundations. The 344-kilometer river inundated more than 20,000 homes and businesses in the regions of Brisbane, Ipswich and the Lockyer Valley.

Goodna, a suburb bridging Ipswich and Brisbane, was one of the worst-hit areas in the greater metropolitan region, with the latest estimates suggesting as many as 600 houses were flooded, many of those submerged to their roofs. Residents continue to grapple with the disaster and the extent of their losses.

Flooded Out

On Tuesday, January 12, Harry went about his normal morning routine, before heading off to work at Queensland News Central, where he had been a contract copyeditor for the past three months. As the day progressed, the rain got heavier, but Harry stayed put at the newsroom.

That was until Melanie called him after she received a text message from the state emergency service instructing them to leave their house: High flood waters were on the way.

“She had called me a number of times and I had trouble concentrating on my work,” the 62-year-old former Jakarta Post senior journalist says. “In situations like that – when a flood is on its way – as a journalist, you are needed in the office more than any other time.”

That night Harry went straight to a friend’s house in Cinnamon Park, a 40-minute drive from Goodna, taking only some important documents and passports with him. He never imagined the extent of the floodwaters; his backyard was already two meters under water.

By mid-morning the next day, the Brisbane River peaked at 4.46 meters, which caused Woogoona Creek – a catchment for the river that runs through Goodna – and its banks to explode, forming lakes and pools of water across the entire town of Goodna. From Old Logan Road, a street just minutes from his house, Harry could no longer see the Ipswich Motorway – it was engulfed in water and his suburb resembled a lake.

The Bhaskaras had moved to Goodna seven months earlier to be closer to their son, 27-year-old engineer Riandy. With only one day a week of contract work, Harry spent his time tending his garden – rich in herbs, chili and lemongrass – and talking with his neighbors. After joining his local community center, he got to see a lot more of Goodna by participating in walks around the suburb.

“It was a lovely place before the flood – very, very green,” he says. “The caravan park next door to our place is normally very clean, but it’s like a war zone now. When the flood hit, the caravans were floating around like metal boxes on water and everywhere you look it’s brown.”

Ambling around the bits of wood scattered throughout his basement, Harry explains his love for books and points to a chamber of shelves that housed his 500-strong book collection.

“Those books I collected for 30 years; I shipped them from Indonesia,” he says despondently. “They were very dear to me. Some, you can’t get anymore.”

His collection included works on history, literature, Southeast Asian studies, politics, and classics by late Indonesian literary figure WS Rendra. One book, Disney’s Wonderful Book of Knowledge, was Riandy’s favorite growing up; it is now rotten, its pages stuck together.

Ghost Town

Harry, a journalist for more than 25 years, recalls the catastrophic Dec. 26, 2004 tsunami that killed hundreds of thousands of people in Aceh and other parts of Asia.

“The Aceh tsunami was much worse than the floods here in Queensland in terms of lives lost,” he said. “It was the end of the world. No houses were spared and all that was left were walls that stood 50 cm from the ground.

“With Aceh, you only found bodies on the street,” he added with deep sadness.

In Goodna’s main street of Brisbane Terrace, down by Woogoona Creek, Rainbow Beekeeper birds flutter among the mauve flowers of the jacaranda trees overlooking the lush green banks of the Brisbane River. Next door at the aquatic center, children splash about, while senior citizen sip their beers after a game of lawn bowls.

But, post-floods, many parts of the area resemble a ghost town. Most of the residents are housebound, making minor repairs while waiting for tradesmen and insurance companies. Across Goodna, debris lie tossed on rooftops, children’s toys and the miscellany of living rooms are scattered through the streets, and residents are left to throw away piles of waterlogged belongings. Semi-trailers lumber in and out of the streets collecting piles of concrete and rubble. The nauseating odors of wet soil and carpet are overwhelming.

It’s not the Goodna that its people knew, nor the town Harry was growing to love.

During the wet season, Woogoona Creek – which runs through Harry’s backyard – is susceptible to flooding. It feeds into the Brisbane River and is meant to alleviate excess floodwater. A 2004 study on flood risk showed that Woogoona Creek had a response time of less than six hours, placing residents in the “flash flood” category.

“Normally you can walk across it and not even know it’s there, it’s so dry,” Harry says. “But this time it kept rising and rose almost five meters, halfway up the house.”

As soon as the floodwaters started to recede, the call for volunteers attracted people from near and far. One unemployed man drove his Winnebago 12 hours north from his home in Bathurst, NSW, and spent more than a week at the Goodna Bowls Club volunteering. Closer to Harry, people passed by to offer cold drinks and hot meals. One truck had a stove attached to the back to barbecue food for residents who needed a meal.

A woman and her daughter came to Harry’s house, offering to wash the couple’s clothes because they knew the house didn’t have electricity.

“When we sit down and realize what we have lost, it is really painful,” Harry says. “It’s like the world is collapsing when you experience this kind of catastrophe, like the world is crumbling around you. And then you see good people around you. Minus these people it would be much more painful.”

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