#logan river

[adventurealldays]

Fall in Logan Canyon

[testormblog]

Temperature and Temptation

With summer, the school holidays arrived.  To me, that meant idle time and temptation, in other words freedom.  I particularly liked skulking along the Logan River’s banks checking the wild mango trees for fruit.  I loved mangoes!  Their sticky juice permanently stained my chin for the season.  Whilst I adhered to Mother’s warnings about snakes, I didn’t abide by hers to stay away from all watercourses.  Those mangoes were way too big a temptation.  Mother feared I’d drown in any pool of water larger than a puddle. I thought she worried needlessly; though, her fear was reasonable in hindsight.  Back then, most people couldn’t swim and nearly nobody could breathe under water.  As there wasn’t any community swimming bath built in the area; I and the other local children had no opportunity to learn.  Consequently, people drowned.

Alas, Mother’s threat, that she’d kill me instantly if she caught me near water, didn’t deter me.  I wasn’t sure which death would be quicker, easier or the least painful; drowning or the punishment I’d receive for sticking my toe in water.  Despite shying away from bath water, I stuck my feet in every pool of water I saw; unless it smelt of course.  I waded in a nearby creek’s shallows on a hot day and through flash flood water to go wherever I needed.  Mother never checked if my feet were dirty or clean from a dip in a puddle on the way home.

In distance terms, the Bethania Waterford area wasn’t far from the coast.  Thus, summer was hot and humid.  The surrounding thickets of bush trapped this heat and humidity.  Fortunately, I knew where this creek was hidden amongst the dense scrub.  It was located conveniently close to Pop’s and Nana’s house and just over one and a half kilometres from my home.  It flowed through a string of waterholes.  Some of these were large pools and others long, narrow channels.  With no roads nor railway houses in the vicinity, the creek became a frequent and secret haunt of mine.  I knew Mother would never find me here.  Being sweaty with the heat, I often felt tempted to immerse myself in the creek’s cool waters.  However, it looked deep and appeared to flow quite fast.  I was alone too.  My previous injury with the tomahawk near this creek had taught me not to engage in dangerous pursuits by myself.

Soon after this injury, I began hanging around regularly with Reggie.  As neither of us were farmers’ children, we had time to goof about.  I learned that mischief was far more enjoyable when it was shared.  Which of us was the worse influence on the other was uncertain.  Reggie was a neighbour’s son and was about six years older than me.  As a young boy, I treated him like an older cousin.  Sometimes, he doubled me on the handle bar of his bicycle to and from school.  By the time I was nine, I had adopted him as my big brother.  He didn’t mind.  There were no other lads in the surrounding area for him to hang with either.  Besides, he loved my bit of hero worship.

His father and uncle were mates with my dad.  The three men were an incongruous trio just as Reggie and I were an unlikely pair.  Reggie’s dad held an important job high up in the Railway; mine didn’t.  Still, their Railway blood was thick.  His uncle meanwhile involved himself with illicit pursuits and paid the price accordingly.  Due to Dad’s friendship, Mother couldn’t disapprove of my budding bromance with Reggie.

Reggie was good to me.  He taught me to be entrepreneurial.  Together, we collected soft drink bottles along the railway tracks for their deposit money and halved the rewards.  When his father bought him a new bicycle to accommodate his lengthening legs, he sold me his older, smaller one for the money I earnt from the bottles.

He had a talent for making fun too.  One day whilst riding along a bush track, we stopped at the creek.  We rode down the creek’s bank into the water as deep as we dared to go.  Reggie couldn’t swim either.  Nevertheless, being the taller of us, he checked the creek’s depth and thought it safe enough for us.  We stripped off.  Reggie was as wily as I.  We didn’t need our mothers to see wet clothing.  We launched our bikes off the creek bank and crashed into the water, splashing each other.  We laughed loudly.  I hadn’t laughed like this before.  The spot became one of our favourite summer hangouts.

We became more adventurous and surveyed the creek’s length and its depths.  Its central channel looked deeper than Reggie’s standing height but its width wasn’t wide.  We had previously spied people swimming in it.  So, we thought we’d take a dip too.  Being country lads, we had our trusty rope with us.  Boys always carried a rope.  It could be used to drag wood home or to help climb a tree.  We tied the rope to a strong looking gum.  This was our lifeline to hold on to while swimming in the creek.  Soon, we let it go and discovered how to dog paddle from one side of the creek to the other.  We swam there often.  I even hid a pair of khaki green shorts permanently in a tree to have a dip on route to Pop’s house.  I no longer looked a dirty urchin.  Luckily, nobody noticed!

Temptation and its friend, stupidity, beckoned Reggie and me to a larger, deeper waterhole further along the creek.  On one sweltering day, this crystal clear pool of water was very enticing.  I jumped into it first without a thought about the creek’s fast flowing current.  This current caught me in its grasp.  I valiantly tried to swim against it but it determinedly dragged me downstream.  I flailed frantically, trying to swim to the creek’s bank.  Reggie dived into those perilous waters, and being much stronger, pulled me to safety.  If I hadn’t panicked, I probably would have floated to the bank where the creek narrowed.  I answered my question about death.  Drowning would be quicker, easier and less painful than Mother’s punishment.

From that day, Reggie and I respected water and its dangers.  In time, we became better swimmers though not fishes like my future children would be.  Neither of us would ever muster the courage to swim underwater either.  At least, we didn’t fear water like our parents did even if we wouldn’t wet our toes in the Logan River.  By the way, they never caught us swimming.

Sometimes, temptation is the best teacher if one survives its lessons and their consequences.  Its lessons aren’t easily forgotten.  The dangers aside, Reggie brought fun into my life and had my back.

[testormblog]

The Cruel River

The Logan River also influenced my family’s life, albeit indirectly.   Although our house wasn’t built near the river, we still fervidly feared it.  Even I, when I was older, wasn’t tempted to loiter in its vicinity.

The river was named after its discoverer, Captain Patrick Logan.  This English man was also the first commandant of the Moreton Bay convict settlement.  Eventually, his name would become synonymous with our local area.  This was ironic given that the English didn’t settle it.  In addition, the man and the river shared a reputation for cruelty. 

The Logan River wasn’t picturesque nor its waters fresh.  In fact, it was ugly and they brackish.  Its dirty brown waters flowed between its steep, muddy banks.  They rose and fell with the tide.  Nobody knew its depth; but it was deep.  Its width back then was about forty metres.  People didn’t swim in it.  Most feared they’d drown.  A few local men caught mullet in its shallows with a rifle or a spear.  Others rowed up and down the river with lights at night to encourage these fish to jump into their boats.  Some set rudimentary wire pots in the river to trap mud crabs.  They fished and crabbed to fill their bellies though not for recreation or commercial purposes.  However, livestock generally kept away from its banks, content to drink from surrounding creeks instead.

Nevertheless, it exercised an almost deity like power over the Waterford and Bethania communities in which my people lived.  It both sustained and consumed life.  It also insulated these communities from the outside world by carving the agricultural area into a distinct territory with its own identity.  It flowed in a sweeping loop from the south to the north then east and looping back.  The town of Beenleigh, about eight kilometres distant to the south, set the other boundary.  Two bridges, one for the railway and the other for the road, crossed this stretch of the river. They were about three kilometres apart and approximately a kilometre and a half each from my home.

Most families living in the area, including mine, had descended from the original German free settlers.  They had intermarried and followed the Christian faith of their forebears.  Consequently, everyone knew everybody else well.  They were heavily reliant on each other too.  They largely lived within their isolated and closed communities and mostly didn’t venture across the river until the bridges were built.  They were also wary of people living on its other side and rarely spoke of anything that happened over there.

The river flooded multiple times every summer.  This left the communities completely inaccessible.  Nobody dared to cross its raging torrents.  The annual floods were both a curse and a blessing dependent on when these arrived.  The floods covered the farms on the river flats in their deluge.  The farmers lost crops some years but the river always rewarded them with silt.  Their land was thus very fertile and its soil some of the best in a hundred kilometre radius.  However, the flood rains washed away the higher land’s fertility.  Predecessor farmers, allotted these blocks by government ballot, had ended up with broken hearts and emptied wallets. 

The Great Flood of 1947 came when I was four years old.  I sat beside Pop on his veranda high above the river watching its floodwaters surge.  Usually, these were constrained within the river’s high banks.  This year however, they rose above the banks, spread out across the adjoining plain and consumed everything in its path.  Ants swarming on cow pats floated by amongst the purple flowered hyacinth.  The bloated, drowned livestock brought a grim look to Pop’s face.  Somebody had lost their livelihood or their milking cow.

Many local families suffered badly with their homes flooded and their crops ruined.  The flood washed away the general store where everybody bought their grocery staples.  The wagon width wide concrete bridge at Waterford collapsed into the river’s angry swell.  This was the area’s sole thoroughfare by road.  People on both sides of the river were cut off from each other.  The Waterford and Bethania communities rallied together to overcome the devastation.  The general store was relocated temporarily until a new building could be erected.  The government installed a ferry.  This enabled children to attend school and farmers’ daily milk and cream deliveries to be transported to the butter factory.  Fortunately, the rail bridge survived intact.

The Logan River continued to menace the local population.  A respected, older man with a farm near the crossing, took up running the ferry.  Soon after, he disappeared without reason into the river at the crossing.  His neighbour, a popular young man, took over responsibility for the ferry.  So, nobody saw any reason for foul play to find him either.  However, the river sucked him into its muddy depths too, spitting him out days later.  People began to fear the river and to avoid it at all costs.  Eventually, sufficient political pressure mounted in the communities for another bridge to be built.  A low level concrete structure was constructed.  This had no side barriers only wire cable guardrails running along its length either side.  The premise was that floodwaters would flow over the bridge and carry the flood’s debris away; thus, not threaten the structure as the 1947 flood had.  The communities celebrated the bridge’s opening and the end of their isolation with a grandiose ceremony in 1954, seven years after the Great Flood.

The river, though, wasn’t finished its feud against its human neighbours, who had disrupted its peaceful existence for the preceding millennia.  It still harboured vengeance against its other neighbour, the third family on its north east bank.  This family had two daughters a few years younger than me.  One summer evening, Nola and Marilyn were riding their bicycles across the new bridge to the rebuilt general store when Nola hit the bridge’s low kerb with her bicycle wheel.  She flew over the top of her bicycle and the cable guiderail into the fast moving water below.  Everybody including me searched along the riverbanks for her.  Sadly, Nola nor her body were never found.

The locals remained wary of and respected the river.  However, outsiders weren’t so cautious.  Later when I was a young man ready to begin my life in the bigger world, a similar young man from Beenleigh had his car break down at the crossing.  He had been dancing with the local lasses at the Waterford Hall.  In the darkness, he pushed the vehicle off the road to the riverbank and attempted to fix it.  Afterwards, when he stooped to wash his hands, the river sucked him into its swirling depths too.

I am no longer superstitious of the Logan River.  However, I realise the superstitions I was raised with, kept my people alive.  Few of us could swim to save ourselves.

[joel-hopkinson-author]

Logan River, Mount Barney Campgrounds - beautiful scenery, relaxing babbling brook, wonderful wildlife...

[quote-it]

Moreton Bay Queensland

islandMuddy waters around Macleay The recent floods have turned the beautiful blue Bay to Brown Muddy Waters. The Logan River has emptied to the sea, and the mud has made the Bay brown. It does not affect the sea life as the salt is only weakly dissolved, so though brown in color, the sea is still salty. Makes a muddy slushy trail behind the ferries Moreton’s Bay’s iconic sea life is being…

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[andrewwhalan]

Duel 2 : Me versus Truck

Duel 2 : Man versus Truck : Jimboomba, South-East Queensland #inthefirstperson #traffic #incident

I was in trouble. Up ahead, in the twilight, two traffic lights turned green. The first, two cars ahead of me., meant that pair of cars moved forward. Towards the bridge : now single lane as it was under repair. Across that bridge, perhaps, a hundred metres away was the second traffic light. Next to that was a semi-trailer. I can still hear the sound as it blew its horn. I can still see its…

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[jaeame-blog]

Body of missing man found in flooded Logan suburb | Logan River

Major flood warnings remain current for the Connors, Isaac, Mackenzie and Fitzroy rivers. The Albert River is continuing to go down now but yesterday, it reached its highest levels since the 1974 floods in Brisbane. The river reached a height of 10.30 metres at Waterford around 4.50pm on Saturday, causing widespread significant major flooding. Logan's Albert River has reached its highest ever level and the Logan River will experience levels this afernoon that were expected at midday tomorrow.

The Bureau of Meteorology reported flood levels in the Albert River peaked close to record flood levels on Friday, and levels in the lower Logan River were generally the highest since 1974. As many as 250 homes were under threat of being inundated on Saturday aftenroon. Floodwaters at Logan in southeast Queensland have reached levels not seen since the record-breaking 1974 floods.Floodwaters are rising to record levels in Logan, while authorities continue to search for four missing people in southeast Queensland. Queensland police warned that the Logan River, which runs through Beenleigh south of Brisbane, would only hit peak flood levels during the afternoon while further north the city of Rockhampton was also facing a serious threat.

Further north, floodwaters are predicted to swamp hundreds of properties in Logan after the southeast Queensland city experienced its biggest river peak in 43 years. Three people have died and two others are missing in floodwaters in south east Queensland, as parts of the Logan River reached the highest peak in 43 years.Police have come to the aid of an elderly man on his walker in ankle-deep flood waters at a a park near the Logan River. The Logan River had nearly reached its predicted peak for midday on Saturday and was staying higher for a lot longer than expected, Smith added. Two people have died and up to four more are feared missing in floodwaters, as parts of the Logan River reached the highest peak in 43 years. Rivers, mostly in the disaster zone from Debbie, have swelled up and flooded their banks.

[jaeame-blog]

Body of missing man found in flooded Logan suburb | Logan River

Queensland police warned that the Logan River, which runs through Beenleigh south of Brisbane, would only hit peak flood levels during the afternoon while further north the city of Rockhampton was also facing a serious threat. Floodwaters at Logan in southeast Queensland have reached levels not seen since the record-breaking 1974 floods. The Logan River reached more than 15 metres at Beaudesert yesterday and was continuing to rise downstream. The Bureau of Meteorology reported flood levels in the Albert River peaked close to record flood levels on Friday, and levels in the lower Logan River were generally the highest since 1974.

The Logan River had nearly reached its predicted peak for midday on Saturday and was staying higher for a lot longer than expected, Smith added. Beenleigh, Apr 1 Flooded rivers were still rising today in two Australian states with two women dead and four people missing after torrential rains in the wake of a powerful tropical cyclone. Police have come to the aid of an elderly man on his walker in ankle-deep flood waters at a a park near the Logan River.Floodwaters are rising to record levels in Logan, while authorities continue to search for four missing people in southeast Queensland. Thirteen evacuation orders remained current, affecting about 25,000 people.

Major flood warnings remain current for the Connors, Isaac, Mackenzie and Fitzroy rivers. The river reached a height of 10.30 metres at Waterford around 4.50pm on Saturday, causing widespread significant major flooding.As many as 250 homes were under threat of being inundated on Saturday aftenroon. Two people have died and up to four more are feared missing in floodwaters, as parts of the Logan River reached the highest peak in 43 years. Three people have died and two others are missing in floodwaters in south east Queensland, as parts of the Logan River reached the highest peak in 43 years. Logan's Albert River has reached its highest ever level and the Logan River will experience levels this afernoon that were expected at midday tomorrow.