MF34

DS34

Apologies for it being a bit on the dark side, the pub garden was going for 'moody' in its approach to lighting.

HH34

Floody hell

Have the floods here been a big story back home? It's getting properly mental now. A huge part of Queensland, which is over thirteen times the size of England is flooded, loads of people have been killed, loads more are missing, and it's set to get worse. It's like something from the third world, or like when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans.

After days of flooding in the country, hitting towns like Toowoomba, Brisbane's getting it now and it's looking total madness. The photo above is outside the SunCorp Stadium, which is at least half a mile from the river - and inbetween is my office that I've been to when up there for work, as well as the hotel I stayed at. All the bods who work there got sent home yesterday and have obviously been unable to get in today, including a member of my team (more work for me, frankly I'm outraged...), meanwhile thousands of offices in the CBD have flooded, thousands of people have evacuated the city, refugee centres have been set up in sports arenas etc... it's carnage. The stadium itself is flooded.

After days of flooding there was another massive flash flood yesterday which caused what was termed an 'inland tsunami'. There's also a huge dam (called the Wivenhoe Dam, Essex fans...) that has reached 190% capacity and is threatening to break or flood areas upstream, so in order to stop that they're having to open the gates and let hundreds of thousands of megalitres more water into the flooded rivers.

There's already been a big Children-In-Need style telethon that's raised tens of millions for the disaster fund, and things have got much worse since and are set to get worse still. There are king tides set for Brisbane tomorrow which should take it to a new level, which is mental as it's a disaster zone as it is. There's loads of heart-breaking stories emerging, like this one.

It seems more mental as it's happening in a major city, like if the Thames flooded and Charing Cross and The Strand, Trafalgar Square and that were all under water.

Very weird. Err, happy new year!