For those Gympie residents most directly affected by the record flooding events of 2022, they don’t need to be reminded of the events of a year ago.
But a testament to the people of the region is their resilience and their fortitude to rise from these calamitous events and rebuild.
It has been a long 12 months since Sunday 27 February, when the Mary River peaked at 22.96m to mark the highest flood in Gympie in living memory.
There has only ever been one flood higher, in 1893, which local First Nations people described as the “Big Fella Flood“, and saw the river rise to 25.45m on 4 February.
The water took so long to go down, it needed very little encouragement to rise again, just 13 days later to another 21.08m monster.
But this flood, last February, took everyone by surprise.
The sheer volume of rainfall, the accelerated rising of the river level and the over-whelming number of homes, businesses and individuals impacted and forever changed as a result will be the focus of a year-long campaign by Gympie Today.
We will speak with survivors.
We will examine the issues arising from it.
And we will look to the future to discover how this record flood transformed this region and its people forever.
