Lindum Creek History
by Barry Wilson 23 November 2011
Lindum Creek as far as I know was originally dug by depression labour in the 1930's.
This drainage channel was made necessary due to the building of Lindum Road and the South Brisbane to Cleveland Rail line across the flood plain of Bulimba Creek, Hemmant Creek and Lindum Creek.
The building of the local roads altered the natural drainage consisting of the overland flows which were blocked or restricted to small culverts and some small hand dug drainage channels.
There were no flood modelling computer programs at that time nor was there very much upstream housing development.
Even during the 1972 flood there was only less that 24 % upstream catchment development in Bulimba Creek with some areas predicted to become as high as 85% development in the extended Mt Gravatt area.
From my earliest memories of what is now called Lindum Creek only on the very high tides that salt water ever made it up as far as the rail line.
Most of the time this channel was dry or only contained a few inches of water except after rain.
The flood gates at Anton Street and other ones in the area were kept locked and residents had to wait for the key holder to eventually turn up and unlock the flood gates to allow flood water to escape.
I remember one year when this took a few weeks. I never knew who held the key.
The rail line spanned "Lindum Creek" with a wide wooden structure offering little or no resistance to the flow of flood waters when they occurred.
This man made drainage channel was in the 1950's not much more that a depression and no more that a metre deep in places and maybe 2 to 3 metres wide where channalised.
This all changed when in the 1960's when Lytton Road was upgraded from Bulimba Creek at Hemmant to the Ampol Refinery including the new Port of Brisbane development.
This upgrade of Lytton Road resulted in many residential houses on the northern side of Lytton Road at Hemmant being resumed as a much wider road reserve was dedicated.
The residents on the southern side of Lytton Road at Hemmant were in many places unable to access their properties with their motor vehicles due to the much increased height of the new Lytton Road.
The new Lytton Road took a new alignment between Hemmant & Tingalpa Road through to Lindum Road across an intertidal acid sulphate flood plain.
This new section of Lytton Road was some two metres above the existing road level as it crossed Lindum Road.
The old drainage channels were filled in and new culverts installed and at a much later time new drainage channels were excavated.
Lindum Creek was originally aligned on the east side of Anton Road and shortly before it turned west to flow to Bulimba Creek, a wooden set of locked flood gates were in place.
The flood gates substantially reduced the amount of tidal waters that could flow past them and therefore limited upstream mangrove growth.
This all changed with the new Lytton Road.
In the mid 1960's a new channel was excavated from the freshwater wetlands on the east side of Kianawah Road then under the rail line then west and north under Lytton Road then under Gosport Street, and eventually west to the old channel alignment to Bulimba Creek.
This channel has not been maintained since.
When I read the Environmental Impact Study on the proposed Port Road in the 1990's I found that the hydrology report stated that the culverts which were recently installed with the upgrade of the Port dual gauge rail line were undersized at both sets of culverts between Lindum and Hemmant Stations.
When in 1995 I was involved with the Perrin Creek Action Group I made a video of several creek culverts between Stones Corner and Lytton.
The culvert at Gosport Street just west of Anton Street was in much need of maintenance because of the four concrete channels under Gosport Street the two outer ones were very close to completely blocked and the two middle ones also had mud/sediment thus in this condition would highly restrict water flows during flood times.
I would also suggest that the Lindum Creek culvert under Gosport Street is undersized especially when compared with culverts under Lytton Road, the Port Road and Ingham Place and the rail line.
It took over two years after my complaint before the Brisbane City Council even started to clean these culverts at Gosport Street.
When I visited Lindum Creek in late July, early August and again in November 2011 I took several photographs to show years of neglect.
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