Another legacy of what happened here was the whole idea of healthy waterways, and how that relates to healthy catchments, and healthy parks. In Victoria, their whole catchphrase is healthy parks, healthy people. So they are making the connection between the health of the ecosystem, and human health. One of CSIRO's flagships is water for a healthy country.

The point I am making is that you may not see these incremental impacts when you're really close to it, but when you're looking from outside, some of the impacts are impressive. However, this renaissance, this attention to the river, and this focus on cleaning the river up increases the vulnerability. When you have an appropriately named restaurant called "The Drift", or you have these boats floating down the river in the flood, or part of the Brisbane River bikeway washed up in Redcliffe--these are things that should stay in Brisbane River. This infrastructure, that was really one of the amenities of Brisbane, has been very much compromised. Now we have to ask some hard questions about what to do.

What I have been impressed with is there were only twenty looters, and there were sixty thousand volunteers that showed up the day after to clean up (The Mud Army). Very impressive. And, the bounce back that the clean up encouraged was amazing. Lang Park, which is completely under water, was where the Maroons took the State of Origin a few months later. Once you bounce back, then you have to start planning for the next flood, because it IS going to happen. That's the one thing you can bank on. We will get another flood, and probably sooner rather than later. Remember how they're bunched up historically? You go through these decadal oscillations, so we better start planning, and doing it now, not later. We need to rebuild and develop after the flood. We maybe have to rethink - maybe this concept of Queenslanders raised up is a good idea in flood prone areas. And maybe building underneath is not a good idea. So we need to look for opportunities and creativity and innovation to rebuild so that we are better prepared for the next flood.

 This blog post was created from a presentation by Bill Dennison, delivered at the historic Customs House in Brisbane, Australia on 8 July, 2011 (full powerpoint presentation can be accessed on IAN Press.