Ex-Shropshire woman caught in Brisbane flooding

Last week Helen Dargan was at home in the suburbs of Australia's third biggest city and watching news reports of the flooding that was sweeping through Queensland.

"I was watching it happen to other people and feeling really awful and thinking I've got to call and donate some money," said Helen, 36, who moved to Brisbane from Shropshire with her Australian husband Matt in 1995.

"Then I started to hear that all of the run-off was going into our river system and heading our way."

Today the former Newport High School pupil and her family are staying with relatives while they wait for the flood waters to recede enough to assess the damage to their house.

It has been flooded by muddy river water just weeks after the couple finished a year of renovations.

"It's half a metre up our walls, and the floorboards are warped and lifting, and the carpet is ruined."

But despite the damage Helen said she and her husband, who have a daughter aged three and a three-month old son, considered themselves lucky.

"If it had continued raining in the way it had, which was just a wall of water, absolutely torrential, then the whole house would have gone under, but then we really did get this miraculous break in the weather.

"My entire suburb went under. In my local shopping centre it's up to the roof. All of the suburbs surrounding me are completely under water. But if you are not near the river or on the top of a hill it's like nothing has happened."

"It's a bit like a tale of two cities at the moment," she added. "Some parts are submerged and will be a muddied wasteland, but in other parts it's like nothing's happened.

"Our suburb is like a very sodden ghost town, but where we're staying coffee shops are open and we're ordering pizza. Were it not for the fact that the news choppers are permanently overhead you could be here and not know anything had happened.

"Police are literally patrolling my suburb on jet skis at the moment."

The flooding across Queensland has submerged dozens of towns - some three times - and left an area the size of Germany and France combined under water.

Twenty-five people have been killed and 55 people are still missing as a result of the floods.

Helen said although having her home engulfed in floodwater had been devastating, there was a real "can-do" spirit among friends and neighbours, with people helping each other out and getting on with clearing up.

She said: "I have allowed myself to have a few moments where I've just locked myself in the bathroom and sat on the floor and just sobbed, but otherwise I've just adopted this Queenslander 'She'll be all right' Aussie stoicism.

"We're very lucky. We got pretty much all of our stuff out, my family is safe, I've got a three-year-old who needs to be not terrified by all of this so I'm just trying to be as casual as I can for her and keep life as normal as I can for her and trying to focus on cleaning up, because that's all I can do."

She added: "In the scheme of things, when I look at what happened to other places, with the flash flooding and the loss of life and the houses just getting washed away with people in them, I do feel - it's weird to say it - but I do feel lucky, fantastically lucky."

The family expect it to be several months before they can move back in.

"I don't know if it's an Aussie thing, but the attitude is 'What are you going to do?' We'll wait, the waters will go down, we'll open our windows to get rid of the stench, rebuild, and this time next year I'll be raising a glass of Champagne in my newly refurbished home."