Riparian worlds

The recent flooding disaster in QLD and other Australian states reinforced the way water can completely change a landscape and our view of it.

 The future river-proof QLDer houses

My Brisbane suburb of Graceville was altered in both its physical environment (streets and houses submerged, creeks and the river joining to form suburb wide lakes that revealed the contours of the land) and social / political (streets where neighbours rarely spoke changed dramatically; water-spotters wandered about; complete strangers and strange houses were evacuated by volunteers en masse).

For me, the single biggest outcome from this disaster is the way we relate to our city / state and to each other changed. We were pushed out of our ruts.