A little late in posting but I thought I would share some pictures of Rainbow beach when they had 713mm of rain in one 24 hour period. In just a few days Rainbow beach had over 900mm of rain.
We planned to camp at Teewah beach from Wed 22/08/07 to Sun 26/08/07. Give the camper trailer another work out before the Kimberly trip in Sept.
As the camping trip grow closer the weather turned bad so we decided to wait a day or 2. On Thursday afternoon the weather bureau said the wind will be easing on Friday and only a few showers.
With the camper trailer packed we were ready to go at about
4:30am Friday morning from
We arrived at the Caltex server station outside Gympie just
after 6:30am. It had rained all the way from
On arrival at Rainbow beach it was still raining and the wind blowing pretty strong. We headed for a café to have brekkie. While waiting for brekkie to arrive, we over heard locals talking about the wild storm that rage all night until the early hours and the torrential down pour. This didn’t sound good!
We didn’t have camping permits yet so we headed off to the
parks office to find out what it was like down at Freshwater. When we arrived
at the parks office there were notices saying all camp grounds are closed and
weather warnings are current. This is when we found out that over 700mm of rain
fell from 9:00pm Thursday night to about 5:00am Friday morning. We were advised
that we should leave town as all camp grounds were closed and campers are still
being rescued.
Well we decided to have a look at the main beach and Inskip
point before we headed back to
Rainbow beach was awash with foam and huge waves breaking on the beach. Even at low tide the waves were washing right up to the top of the beach and into the sand dunes.
Inskip point on the Tin Can bay side was calm of course but
the water had completely flooded the camping area. Well it was time to drive
back to
We got a few miles out of Rainbow beach and meet our first creek which was over the road. It was only shallow so we kept going. A few miles past the Tin Can bay turn off we were stopped with a creek 1.5 meters over the bridge. What? We had only crossed the same creek a few hours earlier and the water was well under the bridge! The back road to Maryborough was also cut. We were stranded in Rainbow beach.
If we hadn’t gone site seeing we may have gotten out.
We booked into a motel, unhitched the camper trailer.
With noting else to do we headed back to the beach for another look. There were two guys with a jet ski and four surfboards trying to get through the huge waves on the beach. Every time they started to head out the surfboards would get washed off the pontoon they towed behind the jet ski. After watching the two blokes on the jet ski try to get through the breakers unsuccessfully we heading off to get lunch. It was only lightly raining now but the wind was still blowing.
Saturday morning had arrived. We headed off to a café for brekkie and also to find out if the roads were open.
The road to Gympie was still closed but the back road to Maryborough was open with care to 4WDs.
After going the long way around via Maryborough we arrived
back in
BOM August in Queensland 2007
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/month/qld/archive/200708.summary.shtml
Snippet from the BOM web site
“The highest monthly
total was 1153 mm at Coops Corner, followed by 1019 mm at Mt
Bilewilam.
The wettest single day was the
24th with 714 mm at Coops Corner, 713 mm at
Rainbow beach – low tide (Friday)
Inskip Point ocean side (Friday)
Inskip Point camp ground. Not my camp site. Hope the campers are ok! (Friday)
Road to Gympie. The 2m flood sign could not be seen for water now. (Saturday)
Back road to Maryborough (Saturday)
