Bringing Our Passion to Bulimba and Hawthorne

At Inertia our motto is ‘Our Passion, Your Success’ and for a major series of developments in Brisbane’s premium riverside suburbs, Pashen was the name of the game.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s much of Bulimba and Hawthorne consisted of industrial land that was ready for redevelopment. With a close proximity to the city, access to the Brisbane River, trendy Oxford Street and a safe local community, the suburb became a hot sport for development as affluent families wanted to create their dream home in this premium part of the city.

Unfortunately, from a development perspective, Pashen Creek runs through much of the area, leaving it prone to overland flow flooding. This form of flooding is common after heavy rain in the local catchment and impacts around 750 lots in this particular area. As a result, Brisbane City Council developed detailed flood modelling designed to control development and minimise risks to potential new homes in the area.

Another key challenge with development in the area is the priorities of home owners when it comes to design. When investing in a dream home, property owners are rightly focussed on designing their dream and are usually unwilling to compromise on aesthetics, which makes simple design solutions like building on stilts a compromise that is too far a stretch for most.

But challenging doesn’t mean impossible and for a number of premium developments, Inertia’s Flood Team were able to use their expertise, local knowledge and engineering skills to overcome many of the barriers to development and help deliver some outstanding prestige properties in Bulimba and Hawthorne.

Inertia’s Nathan Green outlined their approach “The flooding characteristics in the lower reaches of Pashen Creek are not typical of what you would find with overland flow flooding in Brisbane. It is more typical of Brisbane River flooding, which is slower to inundate properties, rather than flash flooding associated with overland flows path, where heavy rain unleashes a torrent of water at high pace and volume.”

“More often than not, the area sees water pond within road reserves and lower lying properties, and because it is slow moving water, there is less risk and therefore more potential to work with Council within the guidelines to develop a solution.”

“In some instances, a solution can be as simple as increasing clearance under a property so that inundation doesn’t occur and debris does not become trapped. Thanks to the modelling we undertake and the guidelines we can work with we can design solutions that achieve the goals without ruining the aesthetic of the property by requiring it to be several meters above the level of flooding.”

“At other times the solution may be more complex, but armed with guidelines and modelling results, we are able to work closely with council and their engineers to negotiate a solution that council and the homeowner or developer is happy with.”

And for several key projects in the area the results speak for themselves.

“We have worked on some fantastic properties that are now the homes that our clients envisaged when they set out to build their dream property in a premium part of the city. And with each property we have worked hard to ensure that through understanding the market, the situation and the needs of the clients we create outcomes that improve appeal, price and yield for their investment in time, energy and emotion.”

“The outcomes we helped create for 115 Barton Rd in Hawthorne, 135 Hawthorne Rd in Hawthorne, 74 Malcolm St in Hawthorne and 1 Leura Avenue in Hawthorne highlight what can be achieved when accurate flood modelling and innovative structural design combine to great effect.”