Fish have been found flopping about on the streets of an outback Queensland town after record rainfall in the region.
The heavy rain from ex-tropical Cyclone Esther has been manna from heaven for the drought-stricken town of Yowah, 950 kilometres due west of Brisbane, but locals say it has been also been raining fish.
Yowah caravan park owner, Rick Shiells, stumbled across the strange sight on his way to check the rain gauge.
“As I’m walking along I saw a little fish, about an inch long, swimming in the puddle,” he said.
“I thought, ‘geez, that’s unusual’.”
Mr Shiells said he found more — alive and dead — along the way, with some up to 70 millimetres long.
There is a bore drain behind the caravan park, but he said when it spouts onto the street the water is boiling hot.
Mr Shiells said the bore could not have been the source of the flapping fish and that they must have rained down.
“There’s no way it could have come out of the water — it’s obviously come from the sky,” he said.
“I’ve heard of it before, especially after a hurricane [cyclone] or tornado.”
Recent rain has cut supply roads to the town but the unusual sight has been helping keep locals’ spirits up.
“We’ll be having fish and chips,” Mr Shiells said.
“Well, we won’t be having chips because we’ve run out of potatoes, I’m told.”
Fish ‘spreading their wings’
Finding fish in unusual places is not unheard of in outback Queensland.
Queensland Museum ichthyologist, Jeff Johnson, identified the Yowah fish as the spangled perch, a freshwater species common across the country.
He said the “rains of fishes” phenomenon occurred regularly in inland Australia.
In this case, Ms Johnson said it was most likely that the fish were stuck in small, isolated waterholes which had dried up as the drought wore on.
He said when it rained the fish took the opportunity to “spread their wings”.
“They have an incredible urge to disperse when the rains come,” Mr Johnson said.
“They’ll even swim for kilometres up water-filled wheel tracks.
“They take-off up all these little temporary tributaries.”
Mr Johnson said occasionally waterspouts sucked fish into the clouds and later dumped them, but he said this is rare and involved smaller fish species.
But he said in the case of the phenomenon in Yowah the roaming fish had been stranded when the rain had stopped, only to be discovered by surprised passers-by.
“The locals take some convincing that they haven’t just randomly fallen out of the sky,” Mr Johnson said.
– ABC / Damien Larkins
