Queensland Floods Inundating Areas That Haven't Been Flooded Since Europeans Arrived On The Continent
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Griffith University professor Fran Sheldon, a river ecologist specialising in dryland river systems, says the floods were “massive” and “probably at the extreme end of the boom”. “It’s covering flood plain areas that haven’t been inundated in European memory,” she says, although evidence from soils and fish genetics suggest floods of this scale have happened before.
Inland flood waters are expected to take weeks, or even months, to move downstream into South Australia, towards Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre. Kati Thanda’s river catchment spans 1.2m sq km – more than a seventh of the Australian landmass – including parts of Queensland, South Australia, the Northern Territory and New South Wales. Rainfall and river flows are extremely variable, fluctuating between long dry periods and sporadic rainfall. According to flood gauges, the enormous body of water has surpassed the 1974 event, widely considered the largest flood in Queensland history. But it was still sitting within the floodplain, Sheldon says, just “reaching the edges” of where people thought it would go.
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According to the Bureau of Meteorology, broad areas of western Queensland received up to four times their March average rainfall. In four days – from 23 to 26 March – parts of southern and south-western Queensland had more than their annual average rainfall. The airport at Winton, Australia’s dinosaur capital, recorded 158mm on 26 March, 56mm higher than the previous daily rainfall record for March. A day later, 177mm fell at Dillalah station, off the Mitchell Highway about 700km west of Brisbane, breaking its record by 31mm. The pastoral lease received so much rain throughout March – 417mm in total – it nearly doubled its monthly rain record.
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Most of the water currently sitting over Cooper Creek and the Georgina, Diamantina river systems will eventually make its way into Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre. The “great big creeping mass of water” is moving at a walking pace, Sheldon says. But once it reaches Kati Thanda – in weeks or months – it will probably fill the lake, a rare event that only occurs a few times each century. “We’re looking at something pretty unique,” she says. As the flood waters progress, wetting soils and filling up rivers and wetlands, nutrients and invertebrates will provide a ready food source for fish and waterbirds.
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/apr/06/how-historic-is-what-were-seeing-in-the-queensland-floods-its-hard-to-grasp-the-full-magnitude