They've seen fire, they've seen rain

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Pair drink at the Albion Hotel, which is surrounded by flood waters in the North Queensland town of Normanton that has been flooded by monsoonal rains. (BRIAN CASSEY / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES)

CANBERRA -- They've seen fire, they've seen rain and, with apologies to James Taylor, they don't want to see its face again.

Mother Nature has Australians bowed if not quite beaten. In the past fortnight the continent has been subjected to a series of climatic wallops delivered from north to south and points in between.

The death toll from the fires of Black Saturday, Feb. 7, has crept past 200 with authorities now admitting the remains of many more victims may never be found. Victoria police deputy commissioner Kieran Walshe admitted this week it was becoming difficult to determine whether some remains were human.

"As to what the number is going to get to I think we should await and let it unfold over the next week or 10 days."

With this Sunday declared a national day of mourning for the bushfire victims, the fires that turned thousands of hectares of the southern state of Victoria into a barren moonscape now have a counterpoint in the far north.

Way up beyond the Tropic of Capricorn, thousands of Australians are marooned on inland islands surrounded by raging flood waters that won't retreat for weeks.

In the fishing centre of Karumba and the small town of Normanton in Far North Queensland, residents wait for military aircraft to drop food supplies while dodging the occasional crocodile making its way down a side street.

Australians love perpetrating the Crocodile Dundee legend to illustrate to the world what a rugged nation we have tamed, but crocs in the flooded north are no longer the stuff of chest-beating yarns -- they're a clear and present danger to residents.

Bob Katter, the MP representing the sprawling far northern seat of Kennedy, told federal Parliament his constituents in Karumba alone were struggling with appalling conditions.

"Some 800 souls there are now into their fourth week surrounded by 15 kilometres of raging, crocodile-infested floodwaters," he said. "Just on dusk the other night, the mayor of (the nearby town of) Georgetown crossed the river in a dinghy and counted some 23 crocodiles in the water, two of them most certainly were very large."

Katter told the House a couple put their two-month-old baby in a dinghy to travel three hours through raging croc-infested flood waters to receive medical care.

The death toll in the flooded north pales in comparison to the burned out south -- just three people have died including a little boy swallowed by a crocodile in the rainforests of the Daintree just north of the far northern city of Cairns.

"Our troubles pale into insignificance compared with what has happened in Victoria," Katter admitted. "But it is my duty to advise the House that northeastern Australia, not just North Queensland, has had the most widespread flooding in its entire history since settlement 150 years ago."

As Queensland frontbencher Ray Hopper likened government relief efforts to the Bush administration's approach to hurricane Katrina, cattle fodder drops costing C$2.4 million began on Wednesday.

National broadcaster ABC reported flooding may have killed more than 100,000 head of cattle.

Georgetown grazier John Bethel told ABC it was the duration of the wet season which has left so many properties devastated.

"They'll (the losses) be massive -- this is probably the most under-reported natural disaster event in the Gulf country's history," he said.

Clouds carrying rain moved south during the week with flood waters dunking towns and cities across the southern state of New South Wales.

In the township of Bellingen more than 3,000 residents were isolated Tuesday afternoon. Mayor Mark Troy estimated damages in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In the far north of Western Australia, up to 25 centimetres of rain fell on Monday, followed by further rains on Tuesday that caused creeks and rivers to flood, forcing mining giant Rio Tinto to suspend some mining operations, along with rail and port operations in the region.

The calamities haven't dampened the Australians' goodwill towards their fellow man.

The Cairns Post newspaper reported that residents in the flood-ravaged far northern town of Normanton held raffles in the local pub to raise money.

The locals, who no longer have any goods at their local supermarket to spend their cash on, raised around $1,700 to help victims of bush fires.

"The poor buggers in Victoria have got it far worse than us," local butcher and former mayor Ashley Gallagher explained to The Post. "They're in a bad way so we are trying to make the most of our bad situation by helping them out."

Michael Madigan is the Winnipeg Free Press correspondent in Australia. He writes about politics for the Brisbane-based Courier-Mail.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 20, 2009 A11