1974 Flood: Houses Float Down the Bremer River in Ipswich

Houses, whole Queenslanders, were floating down the Bremer River here in Ipswich, smashing into the railway bridge back in January 1974. Everything that could float came down the river. Jim Madden was 15 at the time, and he remembers walking through his own house with water up to his chest. His family had to evacuate to his grandparents' place on a hill nearby.

The end of January 1974 was the end of summer holidays for many across the state. On January 24th, Cyclone Wanda crossed the coast near Maryborough, about 265 kilometers north of Brisbane, and brought days of torrential rain to the south east. This was after a very wet summer in 1973.

While Brisbane often gets the spotlight for the 1974 floods, Ipswich actually bore the brunt of it. The town was submerged for 36 hours because the water from the Bremer River couldn't get out into the Brisbane River.

The smell after the floodwaters swept through was a putrid mix of mud, sewerage, oil, and rotting foliage that coated everything. Sandra Ballinger, who was two months pregnant, remembers being stuck on the second level of her parents' house near the Brisbane River in Norman Park. She said when a big boat went past, the wash from it would surge through the house. She and her husband, Gary, and her father, Richard Holt, had worked to move furniture from the ground floor to the second level. The lower level was inundated, destroying what couldn't be salvaged and leaving 100 millimeters of stinking, brown mud throughout the whole house once the water receded.

The 1974 floods directly affected over 35,000 people. Sixteen people died, more than 300 were injured, and 13,000 properties were impacted. It was the worst flood in the region since 1893.