Community spirit of a civilian army
Jade. Glen. Hannah. On paper they're just names; names you might have considered calling your child or the name of your daughter's best friend.

This month, they became so much more. Each of them told a story, one it's difficult to describe without feeling the torment behind the water torrent that swept across the state, without discrimination.

Jade is just eight, but she made her parents drive 100km to give her new pink bike to someone she didn't know, because they'd lost their toys in the water that engulfed the Brisbane suburb of Oxley.

Glen lives downstream from Oxley. He got out early. He couldn't afford not to; not with three young children and the youngest with a serious medical condition.

But it was the image of him the next day that I won't forget. He struggled through water, that climbed up to his chin, to find his home and his future destroyed. You read it on his face, and just wanted to hug him.

Hannah lives a couple of hours up the road in Toowoomba, not that address matters much when a torrent of waters surges indiscriminately on a reckless path levelling millionaires' homes and rural sheds, destroying the dreams of the young and the old, and leaving behind orphans, widows and widowers.

Hannah was anonymous for a couple of hours. Police released an image of her, a dot in a muddy angry river of water that turned Toowoomba on its head, with a plea to find her.

It didn't take long. The same community spirit that flooded donation lines led police to the young woman who will live with her harrowing fears long after most have forgotten them.

Her rescuers were a couple of blokes you might not look twice at in your local pub. Today they're holding their heads high as heroes. Larry and his men should too.

Night and day, as waters climbed buildings and snaked into homes, they took to helicopters and boats and trees and roofs and pulled those they could from the angry waters that threatened to swallow them too.

Some of them had big wins, saving entire families. Others today are still wondering if they could have done more, if they could have saved just one more child.

That's what happens when whole families disappear in a couple of seconds. Some grabbed for a phone, to warn loved ones what was happening. It was better to know, than to wonder.

That selflessness is a bit hard to fathom for the rest of us. But it showed itself over and over again, not least in the case of Jordan Tyson, a 13-year-old who, despite a fear of water, told rescuers to save his little brother first.

At his funeral, his big brother Chris told how he used to tease Jordan, or Weedsy.

"You were so shy, always hanging off mum. You were petrified of water, heights and even the dark. How wrong was I?

"Here you go losing your life from one of your biggest fears to save your little brother. You made me so proud. What you did took heart, courage and love.''

Stories like Jordan's have turned suburban streets into civilian army camps. A call to arms one weekend saw thousands and thousands of mums and dads march down streets, carrying mops and buckets, and wearing big smiles.

They walked into homes they'd never noticed before and started scrubbing. They shovelled silt 10 centimetres deep from stairs and removed dead fish from pantries, helped take lounge chairs from backyard swimming pools and left at the end of the day, wanting to know when they could come back.

You don't mess with a school fete convener, and mums like Karen Simons, along with local parents and citizens' groups, ran suburb-wide operations from her kitchen.

She didn't have power and she didn't even know most of the people calling her house their temporary home. But as news spread of her generosity, everyone from soldiers to the homeless dropped in for a cold water, a home-made sandwich, and even an ear.

Karen will have her own demons to confront. Knowing waters were engulfing her friend's home, she grabbed a kayak and took to the streets, guiding it around corners, past parks, and through the front door of Anne's home.

Anne, like so many others, lost nearly everything, but that doesn't really matter. It's just her daughter's room. Her little one didn't know when I spoke to her but the pink bedroom wall was lying out on the sidewalk. All four walls.

Heartache followed heartache for so many families, and after cleaning their home, even using toothbrushes to get the sludge from every nook and cranny, Anne and her husband were told the walls had to be demolished. In many cases, that unleashed another beast.

Along sidewalks, asbestos sheeting lay discarded. In the urgency of the moment, long-term worries were laid aside. That's a problem for another day.

Down the track, people will think of what comes next: whether we want the same relationship with our river, whether a home on the riverbank is a sign of success or a shadow over your shoulder; whether we need to re-look at how our communities grow and how our land is zoned.

The cost of those few Christmas holiday weeks is hard to fathom. That's a debate for another time too.

But it's the community spirit that's floated to the surface in the end; an indomitable spirit that has carried the army of volunteers to their next job, that has local communities of company directors and concreters and accountants working to the local fete convener, and of young people like Jade, an eight-year-old whose heart is so big she gave away her shiny pink bike to another little girl she's never met,but whose smile will not be drowned by the torrent of tears that has flooded Queensland.