Health News at Your Fingertips

Flooding has caused the closures of 179 schools across northern New South Wales, with some unable to operate due to roads being cut and others being inundated by water.

Education department secretary Georgina Harrisson told NSW budget estimates 130 government schools, 21 catholic schools and 28 independent schools had been affected during the crisis so far. Harrisson said:

We know some of those schools need to be closed because the roads are cut and you can’t get there and we don’t envisage that there’s necessarily damage to the schools.There are other schools that are in the middle of the floodwaters. I’ve been speaking to a few principals up there who know that they’ve lost quite a bit at their school.

Drivers remained stranded on the M1 motorway south of the Tweed River this morning, with many of them now stuck for more than 48 hours.

Rahjah McNae was driving a truck full of chicken to Aldi when he was halted by flood waters on Monday morning.

He has spent the past two nights with 100 other vehicles on an isolated “road island”, with flood waters on either side, of which there are several stretching down the Pacific Motorway.

I got access to the road yesterday as part of a group bringing fresh fruit and water, and found a resilient community pooling resources.

By text message this morning, McNae has confirmed they are all still waiting, and reported “some loss of community” as patience begins to fray with the ordeal.

The manager of Ballina’s community radio station, Jenny Ellenbroek, says flood water is at the door of the Cherry Street building and the CBD of the coastal town lost power around 8.30am.

“The water is at the doors of the council chambers and the Paradise FM station – that whole Cherry Street area, the water is now knee-deep,” she said.

“High tide was at 9am, the water didn’t come in and we hope we’ve dodged a bullet.”

Ellenbroek said the CBD had also lost internet access.

“Nobody has internet and most people have also lost phone signal and so that’s really impeding being able to tell anyone what’s going on.”

She said West Ballina was totally inundated.

“Lots of businesses out there have gone under. It’s hard to tell from where I was whether the river has held its banks in the CBD area, but it would appear that in West Ballina that hasn’t happened.”

She said SES volunteers were out in the CBD, which is under evacuation orders.

“We are in absolute awe and shock of this, because this is not generally what happens in Ballina, but of course it’s collided with a 1.8 metre high tide, it’s creating havoc.”

The SES is predicting that around 6,000 properties in the Ballina area will be impacted by the rising Richmond River over coming hours, with high tide at 9.25am.

Ballina is about 40km east of Lismore, and Lismore’s flood water – still above the major flooding mark – will be making its way to the ocean in coming days.

SES spokesman Andrew McCullough said SES warnings now cover an area of 10,800 people after evacuation orders were issued for the town’s CBD late yesterday afternoon, with a warning to be out by 7pm.

The local hospital was also evacuated late last night, with 55 patients moved to a Ballina secondary school.

“With the 6,000 properties, it doesn’t mean they will have full flooding impacted,” McCullough said.

He said some houses would have water over the floors, while others will have flood water through their gardens.

“Because it’s tidal, so close to the ocean, we will be watching this very closely over the coming hours where it ends up,” he said

“We’ve sent out evacuations, certainly as a precaution, because we believe there will be a lot of water in Ballina in the coming hours.”

A research lab which aims to bring back the Tasmanian tiger is set to be established at the University of Melbourne.

The lab, established by a $5m philanthropic donation, will focus on developing technologies for thylacine de-extinction as well as marsupial conservation.

Lab leader Prof Andrew Pask said his team’s research consisted of nine steps to bring the extinct apex predator back, the first of which was sequencing its genome in 2017.

Pask said:

The funding will allow our lab to move forward and focus on three key areas: improving our understanding of the thylacine genome; developing techniques to use marsupial stem cells to make an embryo; and then successfully transferring the embryo into a host surrogate uterus, such as a dunnart or Tasmanian devil.

The last known Tasmanian tiger died in captivity in 1936. Pask said the species had a compelling case for de-extinction, as its habitat has remained largely unchanged.

Pask said:

While our ultimate goal is to bring back the thylacine, we will immediately apply our advances to conservation science, particularly our work with stem cells, gene editing and surrogacy, to assist with breeding programs to prevent other marsupials from suffering the same fate as the Tassie tiger.