September: Channel Country soaks up flooding rains

Happiness is being belted into a small helicopter without a door and leaning out to photograph a vast southwest Queensland landscape under water. Cyclonic rains had transformed the state’s Channel Country in February 2008 for only the fifth time in the past 30 years, and local school principal and station owner Helen Commens was there to record it. She says she was glad to have captured just a fraction of “this amazing 360-degree water world”, before the run-off drained slowly from Cooper Creek to inland Australia. The flooding at Windorah lasted for about six weeks and peaked at about six metres on 29 January.

For Helen, who was on long-service leave as principal of Windorah school (with eight pupils), the floods were an exciting change from the quiet life, living 300 kilometres from the nearest substantial town of Longreach. She and partner James also run Ourdel Station (“only 100,000 hectares”) and James flies the helicopter to muster their 2000 cattle. “Helicopters don’t make for easy photographs,” Helen says.

Floods in the Channel Country can sometimes be caused by rain falling hundreds of kilometres to the east and taking weeks to arrive in the region. In mid-January 2008, high rainfall on the western slopes of the Great Dividing Range, about 300 to 400 kilometres northeast of Windorah, flowed into surrounding catchments, including those of the Thomson River to the north of Longreach, and the upper Barcoo River in the Blackall area. The waters from these catchments, together with heavy local rainfall, combined to form the Windorah flood.

Note: The photograph in the printed calendar is NOT watermarked with a copyright symbol and name.

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