Mentioned this to Cisco yesterday but thought it might of use to others in the group that live in Qld or plan to visit and enter major Qld rivers. The Qld Dept. of Natural Resources & mines monitor flows in most rivers and many creeks mainly for water management and allocation but the data can be useful for gauging the scale of flows in a river and the potential impact of flood flows on boats that are in downstream reaches.

The link to the data is water-monitoring.information.qld.gov.au/host.htm it provides accurate and up to date data (usually) on flows throughout Qld catchments. When you click on the link above you open the home page, on the left menu at the top is Streamflow Data, if you click on open stations you get a google map of Qld with the catchments outlined in red and flow gauge sites as coloured dots, the colours indicate a flow relative to average flow with green being a high flow. All you need to do is find the catchment you want and click on the dot for the area you are interested in and the page will load a summary of the flow data. The most useful graphics are the latest cross-section it shows the current water level in comparison to the highest and lowest on record, the other one is the latest flows, it shows a graph of the last 7 days and if the graph is still climbing the flow is yet to peak if it's falling it has passed. I usually start with the upper catchment or an area I know has recently had high rainfall and work downstream.

Showing the Burnett Catchment today as an example, the rain over this week-end 29th-31st January originated in the north-west of the catchment through to the east coast. If you look at the Ceratodus Gauge you will see the flow is still peaking and fairly rapidly, the Gayndah flume gauge is one of those unreliable ones so I skip that. Mt Lawless is upstream of Paradise Dam and it is still peaking, the Figtree gauge is downstream of Paradise Dam it is dropping so the flow hasn't reached there yet but it will in the next 12-24 hours. You can use the data from the custom output tab to look at other historical flows. At the moment the flow is minor and may peak at 15,000 Ml/day without any more rain, a moderate flood last February peaked at 160,000 Ml/day and as far as I know it didn't cause any problems downstream.

A bit of mucking around but worth it if it keeps you and your boat safe.