WORLD NEWS

   QUEENSLAND: After a number of regions being severely hit by a dry spell, with some officially drought-declared since 2002, comes news of the completely opposite problem, floods. Southern Queensland has seen the biggest deluges in years and a state of disaster has now been declared in southwest Queensland.

In Charleville thousands of homes are at risk and police are now forcibly evacuating over 500 people and taking them to showgrounds. Patients from the local hospital are being airlifted to Brisbane as the hospital had been forced to close. Yesterday several people in Charleville had to be rescued with boats by the State Emergency Service. They had been caught out by the rapidly rising floodwater. There had been 145mm of heavy rains in one night.

According to The Australian, a woman with her son had a very fortunate get away in Charleville as their vehicle was swept off a deluged bridge. They clung to a post until somebody came to their rescue with a front-end loader, to save the frightened pair. Bryan Rolstone, a senior forecaster at the Bureau of Meteorology predicts that the rains across Queensland will soon dwindle and move into South Australia.

On the other side of the picture though the rains will mean abundant crops for farmers, and the country’s largest irrigator, Cubbie cotton station, who had recently gone into voluntary administration, may yet be saved because of the large in-flow to the dams on the Murray-Darling river.