WITH the recent Australian floods being blamed on climate change, readers might be interested in viewing pictures from a newspaper I have kept since my three years as a ‘Ten Pound Pom’ immigrant (April 1969 to April 1972) to Melbourne.
As you will see from the pictures we had a deluge on Thursday February 17, 1972. The front-page caption reads: ‘Melbourne late yesterday afternoon. In just 60 minutes a 3in deluge paralysed the city – and cars floated in the streets. It was the heaviest hour’s rainfall ever recorded in Melbourne.’
It rained from approximately 4-5pm that day and when I came out of work at 5pm I remember wading down the city streets towards Flinders Street Station which had come to a standstill because it was flooded.
I managed to hang on to the outside of a tram (no Health and Safety then!) which took me home to our flat in the suburb of Tooronga. My husband, who also worked in Melbourne, did not arrive home until 9pm as he had to walk.
Fires are also being blamed on climate change, but I feel with the onset of quite a lot more immigration over the last 50 years, though not nearly as ‘mass’ as our ‘West’, the Australians have made the likelihood of bush fires worse by building homes in the outer suburbs of Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane etc in amongst the indigenous eucalyptus trees, which are highly oily, therefore highly inflammable. The resulting bush fires have less to do with climate change, more to do with human ignorance.
