The sound of the public emergency sirens hadn’t been heard in the small regional city since 1976.
As the rain continued to fall, the vast body of water behind the 66m high Googong Dam wall surged ever closer to its top.
Three hours on and not only had the concrete barrier been crested, more than four times the amount that goes over Niagara Falls was gushing down the generally sedate Queanbeyan River.
Quickly submerging the lower-lying eastern ground, higher it grew until reaching the elevated CBD area to the west. Anything in the torrent's path was taken with it for the ride.
With rumours swirling nearly as fast as the debris-laden waters, local authorities issued a call that there was no chance the dam wall would be breached. Those who’d lived in the region long enough though, recalled a similar situation 34 years earlier which saw the evacuation of 5,000 residents. And the flood they were witness to in December, 2010, was the most significant to occur in the time since.
Queanbeyan-Palerang Regional Council has just released the latest version of its flood mitigation plan, recommending risk management measures to reduce potential impacts. In light of the local history of such disastrous events, it's something that’s regularly updated for good reason.
Winding its way through the city’s heart, the river, with its plentiful wildlife including platypus, is a significant asset. It’s also played its part historically in both the founding of the town - its abundance and beauty reason enough for the early explorers to lay claim (1820) - and its ongoing contribution to the community’s commercial and social lives. But a picturesque setting on the banks of a permanently flowing watercourse can have its downside.
As many as 19 floods have been recorded in Queanbeyan since European inhabitation, a dozen of those considered "major events". The first was as early as 1827, the most recent, 2016 - and there were two in 1870, a month apart. In just under two centuries, this equates to one approximately every 10 years.
In 2010, it was a "perfect storm": 100mm of rainfall in the space of a few hours, overwhelming a dam already at capacity. With a spillway rather than gates to control the flow of water over Googong Dam, the deluge saw the river peak at 8.4m (27.5ft).
Only a few months previously, the area had been approaching the worst drought in close to a century. Virtually overnight it resumed its position as a floodplain. With the city cut in half, a natural disaster zone was declared.
The carpark underneath the Riverside Plaza, set along the river's western edge, was filled almost to its roofline. With nearby properties inundated, trees ripped free of their moorings, cars and possessions set adrift, the damage bill mounted.
While a testing time, it wasn't the worst emergency of this nature.
That distinction came in 1925 when 350mm of rain fell during May alone, being particularly heavy in the last week of the month.
"The greatest, and at the same time the most disastrous flood in the history of Queanbeyan (extending over more than a century), was that which occurred on Tuesday night [May 26]". By midnight, the river had swelled to an almost inconceivable 11m (around 35ft).
[NB: This height, based on water gauges of the time has in more recent times been questioned, but regardless of actual metres, how far it extended is undeniable.]
Lapping at the very edges of the Queanbeyan Bridge (only replaced in 1900), the CBD was submerged as far as the Town Park at the western edge of the main town area.
The cellar of the Royal Hotel on the primary intersection was completely waterlogged - evidence of which can still be seen today.
The Suspension Bridge of 1901, leading from the Golf Course to Isabella Street, was left a "twisted wreckage" (it would take 13 years before the town could afford to replace it).
In Trinculo Place, which runs the length of the eastern bank, a "substantial brick structure" and all its contents were cast off into the deep.
So extensive was the repair work required, the Mayor of the day was obliged to lobby the government for financial assistance on the basis "the Council had spent all its rates". In response, the townsfolk received the princely sum of 200 pounds (about $2500 today).
It also came on top of another only three years earlier, and surpassed the previous record flood of 1891, adding six feet to its peak. And it was the only one in which there was a loss of life - a painter swept away as he exited his car as the water rapidly rose around him.
Other severe - and more infamous - floods were visited on the town in 1974 and again two years later.
Both were considered "once-in-one-hundred-year events", and they're routinely mixed up with each other.
The former reached almost 9m, and saw a great swathe of the Queanbeyan Riverside Cemetery washed away - and anywhere up to 100 graves. Positioned as it is on the very edge of the river - an otherwise peaceful location - the place of final repose had also suffered the fate in '25, apparently disrupting a similar number of gravesites.
The urban legends from 1974 still abound: the fisherman who saw the body of his recently deceased wife float past him; the fellow boating on Lake Burley Griffin going to the aid of someone he thought was drowning, only to realise it was a corpse. Others suggest bones are to be found embedded in the mud of that ornamental centrepiece.
The reality is that some 60-odd bodies and/or body parts were recovered and reburied - among the more macabre finds, two-and-a-half embalmed corpses (the half being a man's torso). Potentially as many more again were never retrieved.
And according to those involved, there was indeed a watch for any errant passers-by that might have made their way into the adjoining Molonglo River and on into the Lake.
In 1976, the river rose just over 7m, making it the then third highest on local record, and causing considerable consternation for rather different reasons.
In October of that year, Googong Dam was under construction, being built to augment the regional water supply and to help curb the river’s tendency to flood. It stood only 17m tall, “the water behind it about 32m deep” (105ft). To qualify, the capital's lake has an average depth of 4m (13ft), and is 18m (nearly 60ft) at its deepest.
Heavy rain generated real fears it was at risk of collapse and that Queanbeyan would literally be swept away.
The week prior, a confidential report released in The Canberra Times declared the chances of a weather pattern that could engender such an outcome were " infinitesimal".
The major natural disaster even made the Australian Women's Weekly.
Three years later, in 1979, the fully completed engineering marvel was opened by Prince Charles.
Over three decades later, that similar scenario saw those earlier concerns revisited.
Days after the completion of additional works to its spillway, Googong was discharging a massive 10,500 cubic metres of water per second. During this "one-in-a-million event", the head of Canberra’s water and electricity provider ACTEW, publicly assured residents that the system was working as it should and that rumours of a possible dam breach were unfounded.
It's sobering to note that the wall that stands almost directly above Queanbeyan holds back the equivalent of around 50,000 Olympic-size swimming pools. Emergency procedures suggest that should it ever fail, residents would have approximately 34 minutes before their town became a modern-day Atlantis.
Given the position it enjoys, Queanbeyan will inevitably face emergencies sprung upon it by nature into the future, but continued efforts are being made to mitigate the effects. QPRC, ACTEW and the National Capital Authority have short, medium and longer term strategies including the more controlled management of water levels in Googong and Scrivener Dams.
Such are the ebbs and flows of living on a vast and ancient floodplain.
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There have been numerous other tragedies as well over that time, with numerous accidents, drownings, suicides, even murders, that have occurred within and along the waterway. Then there's the unexplained creatures too, and for more on that see: https://citynews.com.au/2017/overall-beware-creepy-creatures/
For more on the Dam and the suburb of Googong - and its other plentiful mysteries:
SOURCES:
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/31686402
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/page/12225727?
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