Blocked Drains Kalinga

1. One building burst, one pipe age

   House building only reached Kalinga at the end of the 1920s, so most of the suburb's drains are earthenware laid in a single era, now close to a century old and reaching the same stage of decay together.

2. Flat, wet ground

   The suburb sits low on creek terraces over floodplain alluvium, and the gleyed soils there hold water near the surface, so trenches stay damp and cracked joints drink year round.

3. Stormwater with nowhere to hurry

   With so little gradient, rain makes its slow way toward Kedron Brook, and while the brook is high the yard gullies and street pits behind it stop draining.

4. Flood ground that proves it

   Council's February 2022 flood extent covers most of Kalinga Park and Brook Road Park almost entirely, which shows how the low country along the brook behaves when a big storm lands.

At the last census, 89.3 percent of the 671 dwellings were separate houses, mostly interwar Queenslanders in weatherboard and brick, with families in the big four-plus-bedroom homes that make up over half the stock. Those houses carry the original drains under renovated bathrooms, so a slow gully on a Rose Street or Kent Road block often has a ninety-year-old pipe behind it.