point of reference

I was asked by a friend to give her an idea of how high our house is compared to the river. It is a good question. I myself often wonder if people who choose to live by a river are asking for trouble during times of flooding.
This is a photo taken by someone (before the flooding) standing on the south bank of the river looking north at the Centenary Bridge. This is a familiar sight for the kids and I because we walk under the bridge on our way to the skateboard park.

This is a picture taken by someone standing on that bridge at about the same point, but looking south. The photo was taken Wednesday afternoon. The entire Western Freeway is under water. Take note of the blue building in the far upper left portion of the screen.
This is a photo of that same building (the blue one in the upper right hand corner) looking east from Sinnamon Road in Jindalee (also before the flooding). I take this road every day to get on the highway when I go to work. When I came home from work on Tuesday, this road was already under water.

The internet is not that forthcoming with accurate topographic information, unless you pay for it. The only point of reference I have for our house is from Google Earth. It tells me that Pillow Talk (the clever name of the store in the blue building) is at an elevation of 14 or 15 metres above sea level. It also tells me that our house is about 16 metres above sea level.

As of yesterday afternoon, our house was dry.

This is the part that drives me crazy. They predict that the water will rise another 1.5 metres above the current level today. Does that mean my house will be under water? Maybe not. It is difficult to assess without a proper map. Either way it will be very close.

I can tell you with certainty that when we walked along Mount Ommaney Drive last week and looked down 40 feet to the normal river level, we never dreamed it would come to our front door.