Floods Threaten Queensland Towns

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30095, 1 April 1963, Page 23

Floods Threaten Queensland Towns

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) BRISBANE, March 31. Flooded rivers three miles wide are raging across thousands of square miles of centra] western Queensland.

The. township of Adavale, about 630 miles west of Brisbane is under a sea of swirling flood waters and seven other towns are threatened by- the Barcoo, Thomson and Bullpo rivers. The rivers have been swollen by torrential rains in the last four days. Aircraft are dropping food to marooned stations. Marooned on Roof Eleven men marooned on the roof of the Green Gate Hotel in the tiny west Queensland township ot Adavale were rescued by helicopter. The men had gone to the old hotel, a typical Queensland ‘‘outback pub” standing on 3-foot high stumps, to watch as flood waters rose. They were forced on to the roof when the water, rising steadily all day, reached 4£t 6in deep inside the bar. The other townsfolk evacuated their own home* to shelter in the hospital, the post office, the police station and a private borne next to the post office. A middle-aged man and a 16-yoar-old boy dug a “grave” in mud and buried themselves with an old man to keep him

alive through the night in south-west Queensland on Thursday. A helicopter plucked the three from a 46ft island in a one mile and a half wide sea of flood water after they had been there 18 hours. Two hours later their island vanished in the flood. The men are Mr Edmund Kilroy, aged 68, owner of Penlan Downs, Mr Sydney Cuddy, aged 45, a shearer, and Mr Colin Nichols, aged 16, a station hand. Kilroy was admitted to Muttaburra Hospital, suffering from exposure. The body of a drowned man, Robert Hugh Kidd, aged TO, was found in the flooded Johns river near Taree. He is the eighth victim of the rain and floods in New South Wales this month.