布里斯班在后清算损失

It’s hard for a city which looks like this to consider itself lucky, but compared to the dire predictions of the last few days, this is nowhere near as bad as it could have been. Brisbane was prepared for the worst, but as the clock ticked down to the 4:00 am high tide, forecasts were revised downwards. And though thousands of homes and businesses are flooded, many more people who watched over their homes nervously through the night found that they have avoided the nightmare scenario.

"We were basically just watching the level rise. And then probably about 11:00 o’clock I got a couple of hours of sleep. I haven’t slept for the days, and then we came out at just before 4:00, about 3:30. And we united at the scene and that was going back down again, so then everyone is incredibly relieved."

"That is our swimming pool just down there, that’s quite a large swimming pool that had a, yeah, a big canopy over it, and then a pontoon with a pile bind in it, arrived on the other side, and over about an hour and a half, just pushed it and took it, and just smashed it."

Even though the homes were spared, they have work to do because of what was washed up in their doorstep, a speedboat and a mooring that was attached to. No one knows where it has come from. A television set floats among rubbish, clogging another apartment car park.

To give you an idea of the power of the floodwater and what’s been carrying downstream. That’s a heavy steel cage full of gas bottles and it's found itself washed up marooned in the middle of a suburban street.

It’s the nature of Brisbane’s undulating terrain which is adjacent to the river that some streets are meters deep in filthy water while properties nearby are completely untouched. Queensland’s premier reflected on the battering her state has endured in recent weeks and said the rebuilding would be akin to post-war reconstruction.

“As we weep for what we have lost, and as we grieve for family and friends, and we confront the challenge that is before us, I want us to remember who we are-- we are Queenslanders, we are the people that breed tough north of the border.”

The water police are dealing with a massive though temporary increase in their jurisdiction, and they’re checking on those who are stranded in their homes. One man drowned as he checked his flooded property. But the murky water which covers so much of this state also conceals more bodies. The human as well as the economic cost of this disaster is still being calculated.

Ian Woods, Sky News, Brisbane.