While trying to find a contractor to raise and restump our house I found out some interesting information. A lot of the houses that have been built around Townsville have only been built 5 feet above the ground. This has always confused me because that was too low to actually build in under.

I found out that Townsville had a flood in the 1940s where a lot of the lower subburbs were under 5 feet of water. Because of that a lot of the houses around town were lifted to 5 feet and a lot of new ones were built at that level.

Our new house, which was built around the 1930’s, looks like it was raised to 5 feet after originally being built. Our old house, which was built in the late 1940’s, was built about 6 feet above ground. Our new house is in quite a high area and flooding shouldn’t be a problem. Our old house was at a very low point and was very prone to flooding, which is one more reason why we are happy to move.

(Our old house was at such a low point that the Townsville City Council actually built a huge drain right infront of house with a pumping station attached to it to pump the water out of our suburb and into the flood plains.)