Townsville is built on a floodplain. From a distance the whole city looks flat, with a few very obvious bumps: Mt Stuart and its foothills, Castle Hill and Mt Louisa. But the flat area is not quite flat.
Early settlers built on the (slightly) higher areas, avoiding the mudflats and mangroves, and formed their roads on the (low) ridges, leaving the (shallow) gullies and creeks alone. Over the 150 years since, low spots have been built up, and watercourses deepened and straightened, as urbanisation encroached on the lower ground. But the natural drainage network persists, as we realise (often unhappily) whenever we get a lot of rain.
An overview
This false-colour image based on our 2019 experience highlights our wettest areas. Ross River and Ross Creek (at lower and upper right) are shown in red, as are the Lakes. Orange, yellow and green are successively less active, and blue areas carry the least water.
On the ground
As a newcomer to Townsville in April 1990, living in Mundingburra and working in nearby suburbs, I was puzzled by the long narrow parks winding through the area. They just didn’t make sense to me.
Then it rained, and their purpose and importance suddenly became obvious: they were floodways.
After thirty wet seasons, several cyclones and more floods, I spent time exploring them by bike during the Covid lockdown. This 2025 near-repeat of our 2019 floods brought that back to mind so I ventured out during a lull in the rain last Wednesday (Feb 5), when the floods had dropped from their first peak, to take the photos below.
A local example
The sinuous mostly-green watercourse winding up from the lower right to the centre of my map is a good example.
Its headwaters are behind the Vale Hotel. From there it flows under Ross River Rd, behind the Aitkenvale library, and through the long, skinny Aitkenvale Park, passing the PCYC at a fairly safe distance. Culverts take it under Armit St and it continues through a big retirement home. (The units are quite high above the stream but I imagine the residents recently wished they were higher still.)
Crossing under Gulliver St, it enters (long, skinny) Anderson Gardens, flowing through an area which is normally open lawns, more recently a broad creek. Near Balls Lane there’s a planned swamp, always wet, before it leaves the park as a prettily shaded stream.
Then there’s (long, skinny) Mindham Park. Shops in Charters Towers Rd back on to one side of it and there are houses on the other. I have often seen floodwaters covering the whole width of the park.
Mindham extends to Townsend St, where the park narrows before widening again at Bayswater Terrace.
The next section, down to Bayswater Rd, is very narrow but the channel then opens out into what are essentially remnant wetlands before reaching Woolcock St.
Just beyond Woolcock the stream enters the concrete channel which drains the Lakes. That channel, nominally a branch of Ross Creek, meets the main Ross Creek between Charter Towers Rd and the Civic Theatre; and so the water from Aitkenvale reaches the Bay.
Always more to learn
My exercise in local hydrology (the study of water flows) can easily be repeated for other suburbs and other waterways. Most of these streams are too small to have names. Mundy Creek, which drains the western inland face of Castle Hill, is an exception.
Googlemaps satellite view is a wonderful tool for initial exploration. Just zoom in on a likely spot and follow the parks (and sports fields and inexplicably vacant land) in both directions. But then get out and see what it’s like on the ground.