If not so much to The Boss.
Unlike me, he wasn’t looking for “biggest ever”.
But New Boy and I were in seventh heaven: the flood waters surrounded us for a few days and all those interesting critters — hares, rabbits, foxes, kangaroos and wombats — were looking for higher ground and came within striking distance.
If we’d had the biggest ever flood, they would have been ripe for the picking.
As it was, we got close to a scrap with a wombat and The Boss thought he should intervene. He reckoned I had no idea of what a wombat’s hefty claws could do to a dog and said I was stupid enough to test it.
The Boss reckons he’d have to go back to 1956 to find a flood that might have pushed the critters close enough for me. The 1974 flood wasn’t big enough; nor was 1993, or 2010. The locals say their grandparents talked about the 1916 flood as the biggest on record — the flood waters pushed up against the railway line.
So I’m scratching my head over why the Climate Council is saying Shepparton is the most at-risk, unliveable city in all of Australia.
Its report, published ahead of the federal election, got another run on 60 Minutes last Sunday. The Boss called it a beat-up.
“General, it’s the kind of absurd exaggeration that puts outfits like the Climate Council in the same boat as crystal ball gazers and science fiction writers.”
The Climate Council report predicted 90 per cent of Shepparton properties would be uninsurable by 2030. Heading the list of “vulnerable” federal electorates suggests we are worse off than Lismore, which has gone under metres of water three times in five years. Or Brisbane, or Taree. Places where floodwater can reach the roof.
It’s insane.
The Boss says the report was based on data obtained from a Sydney company called Climate Valuation, which presumably makes money from piling lots of data together with a few very bold guesses.
They produced a map for the whole of Australia and used projections of how climate change might affect properties through bushfires, sea-level rises and riverine flooding.
“It’s a wild guess, General. They haven’t looked at our flood history, our building levels — or considered the massive river rise required to flood 90 per cent of our houses. We have nothing like the rain events or river behaviour of south-east Queensland.”
The Boss’s old mate Bill used to say “If you have to choose between a conspiracy and a stuff-up, always go for the stuff-up.” And that’s the way he’s leaning.
Except the major house insurers — who collectively made $6 billion in profit last year — are as lazy as the Climate Council and can’t be bothered understanding local conditions either. And that’s costing all of us. Woof!
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