Colleges Crossing 4 months on from the floods

We live very near Colleges Crossing, which is a bend of the Brisbane River, and was flooded spectacularly during the January flooding.  Our area was flooded in for a few days during the flood, on the second day Lolly and I went for a look at the floodwaters.

Here's the view of Colleges Crossing on the 12th January:

I drive past there regularly, it's always sobering to go through there as it's still so devastated.  Here's a shot from just after Colleges opened again in late January (blurry phone while driving, don't try this at home).

This weekend, we headed down for a closer look, and to water our dog...

The whole shape of the river bed is different, all the bushes and small tress, and almost all of the big trees are gone, there are only four large trees remaining in the park, the 100+ year old fig near the cafe was knocked down and killed.

The white structure to the right is what's left of the cafe sails.

Tree survivor looks lonely.

The amount of wreckage in the form of huge mountains of woodchips and gravel/dirt is pretty jaw dropping.  They basically cleared the park and mulched everything.

This is the balcony of the house (right) and the cafe sails (left).

What's left of the shelter supports.  Just wow.

The trees along the other side of the river are slowly recovering, but are still spectacularly wrecked - this is looking towards where the road crosses the river (you can see why this crossing floods at the drop of...well...rain).

Excuse the muddy droplet on the lens! Photgraphy fail!

 This is where the playground was.

Sad face :(

Part of it landed here on the bank.

It will be a long time before the park is anything like it's former beauty, though every weekend there are more and more people still using it.

Also, my dog is cute.

Swimming through the sunlight.

Shake!!