Lismore Floods / May 2009

Last Updated on Friday, 26 June 2009 05:36 Written by Andrew Lai Monday, 25 May 2009 00:00

To all students and parents who are currently staying at the Southern Cross University in Lismore.

We have been monitoring the floods on the Far North Coast very closely over the weekend. We have some personal contacts in the region who I spoke to on Sunday.

Lismore had built a new levy bank and although the flood waters went over the 10 metre mark in the low points of northern Lismore the levy held. The SES took the precaution of evacuating all the houses situated in the low lying areas, some 5,000 in all and overnight they were camped at the Southern Cross Campus which is quite high up and out of the flood zone.

Our Student Services Co-ordinator will have checked on our students none of them called distressed or were flooded in. I must say that these sorts of torrential rainfalls and floods were all part of a cyclical wet season which took place every year around February to April from the Far North Coast and all the way to the top of Queensland. That was the normal weather pattern for the region until the drought over the last 10 years mucked up that pattern and wet seasons weren't regular if at all from the nineties onwards. The past few years seems to mark a return of the wet season weather and general talk among meteorologists and farmers about La Nina effect.

The floods are subsiding from Lismore now and the clean up has begun although further down the coast the low is still dealing blows to Kemsey and Grafton both of which were temporarily evacuated.

Sincerely,
Kate Hamilton
Director Australian Programs

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