Brisbane, the flooded river city

As you may have heard, Brisbane, the city where my program had its home base, is largely underwater as a result of abnormal amounts of rain hitting the area. Toward the end of our trip in Brisbane, we were getting large amounts of pouring rain, which our professors all said was extremely abnormal, since it was summer and Australia is usually in an intense drought. We learned in our ecology classes that it was a La Nina year, meaning larger amounts of rain would occur. Still, though, I don't think anyone was prepared for the rain to cause such devastating floods. My peers in my program have been banding together to fundraise for the relief effort and have so far raised a couple hundred dollars baking cookies and selling them.

Before and after pictures:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/infographics/qld-floods/beforeafter.htm

The pictures of UQ (St. Lucia) are particularly haunting, since I learned my way around that campus and can recognize that in addition to the obvious tennis courts, pool, and track being flooded, the bus stops, lakes, the ferry stop, and my dorm, places where my friends and I spent our last 3 weeks calling home, are under water. The university was closed for some time, but is now open again.

We started our trip in Toowong and spent a large amount of time hanging out in South Bank - you can see the artificial beaches where my friends and I swam on our last days in Brisbane and how they're completely brown now.

My professors, tutors, and program administrators have been keeping us updated on Facebook as to how everyone and everything doing. Apparently, everyone is coming together to help each other in a large community effort in true Australian fashion. I wish I could be there to help, but we are doing what we can here.