BROTHERS IN ARMS ROAD TO HILL 30 WINDOWS ITSELF KEYGEN
But Moran had grown up hearing her elders’ stories about floods much bigger than those of 1954, 19, ones capable of submerging even the high ground that the cathedral was built on. The Koori Mail’s ground floor was high-ceilinged, leaving the first floor well above the height of the levee. No sooner had she arrived back home than she noted a warning that this flood could exceed all that had come before. Out front, water was gushing over the road and into the basement from what was once Browns Creek, but is now a 400-metre-long car park.Īt 10pm, Naomi Moran, the paper’s general manager, locked the door behind her. At the back of the building, the river ran fast and filthy brown. As dusk fell, staff converged on their building to move what they could to the first floor. The pump station, which helps brace the levee, flanks the offices of the Koori Mail, the national Indigenous newspaper. Over at the airport, the Northern Rivers Aero Club towed a dozen single-engined planes onto a purpose-built mount.ĭown by the river, on Molesworth Street, a digital gauge atop the Browns Creek pump station began counting down the centimetres remaining between the river level and the top of the levee wall. “It’s coming, kids.” Hunched neighbours passed them in the pelting rain, hurrying back from moving their motorbikes, caravans and cars to higher ground. Patterson pointed at the ants congregating atop his street sign. Late afternoon, the Pattersons ventured out to take their dogs for a last walk. The floor of their high-set home was four steps above the predicted flood level, they’d stocked up on supplies and they had Netflix. His ex-wife, who lives nearby but higher up, dropped around to see if she should take them. While most homes are high-set, they’re nigh uninsurable, and neighbours spent a sleepless weekend moving upstairs each other’s downstairs goods – lawnmowers, washing machines, cupboards, tools – and stacking their upstairs possessions – hard drives, heaters, clothes, books – atop tables, beds and fridges.Īcross town, in East Lismore, Karey Patterson finished stacking and settled down to a tequila and kombucha. Nickel packed an overnight bag and went to spend the night at a friend’s on the hill, in the suburb of Goonellabah.Įlsewhere, too, people seemed hell-bent. His priest and friends accompanied him to his blue home on stilts in North Lismore, inevitably the first suburb to flood, and helped lift his prized collections of vinyl LPs and books to safety.
He’d lived through five floods but none while intubated to an oxygen concentrator. The intensity of the rain was unnerving, and Ray Nickel, who was on the waiting list for a lung transplant, was in distress. Should the river overtop the levee, the central business district would yet again be inundated, and downtown’s streaming streets were teeming with shop-owners and friends packing up their gear and wares.Īt St Andrew’s church, some 50 parishioners cut short their post-sermon morning tea. Lismore’s 25th major flood in just over 100 years was on its way. It was the second-last day of an inordinately wet summer, and the ranges to the north were being pummelled with rain, as was the basin itself.
On February 27 this year, a Sunday, the people of Lismore knew what to expect. What does the future hold for a town battered by climate-change catastrophe?
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