Annual ritual to remember ‘inland tsunami’ that hit Toowoomba a decade ago

Every year for the past decade, one of Toowoomba’s oldest stores, Rowes, has posted the same photograph on its website on this date.

In it, a sodden lounge chair is wedged upside down on a Russell Street parking meter – an oddity only revealed once the torrent subsided, exposing the damage caused by an “inland tsunami” on January 10, 2011.

The city of Toowoomba sits 691 metres above sea level on a strip of the Great Dividing Range about 119 kilometres inland from Brisbane.

Ten years ago,turbulent…