By Ben Butler
Work to restore and rebuild will take many months.
WARRYN Jones reckons the load of grain sitting in the trailers of his truck may be the last paying gig he sees for a while.
The Ipswich truckie finally made it home on Wednesday after spending two nights stuck parked above Toowoomba, sheltering from the deadly floods below.
Yesterday, the owner-driver was hoping he might finally be able to get to the Port of Brisbane and rid his trailers of the load.
''I've earned no money yet because I haven't dropped my load off,'' Jones says.
In addition to costing lives and destroying property, the floods have robbed Jones, and many other Queenslanders, of financial security.
Across the state, a multibillion-dollar reconstruction effort will be needed to remake roads, repair railways that have washed away and rebuild homes, offices and factories.
Full recovery could take months or even years, depending on who you ask.
''I'm coming home and parking my truck,'' Jones says. ''And I don't know how long it's going to be parked for - it's going to be a little while, I know that. I've already got on to my financier to see if I can suspend payments for three months.''
Roads have been devastated, Jones says.
''I've never seen a war zone but I tell you what, the holes, the rocks, the boulders that were down the bottom of the range - it was absolutely terrible.
''Around Halidon there's a nice parking bay, picnic area beside the highway. It just looked like there was two bulldozers that went through there with a chain on the back and stripped the area bare.
''It's just stripped all the trees bare. There was no grass, it's just all sand.''
He says that even before the floods inland roads west of Dalby were in bad shape.
''The whole problem is that the Queensland Labor government has had the state for the last 15 years and they've just let the infrastructure go, they haven't done anything about it.
''We've got road trains out here, we've got B triples out here, they're driving on the roads and their back trailer's just swinging around like a snake's tail.
''That's because of the condition of the roads, and how no one's been killed by the third trailer hitting a car or something, it's got me buggered.
''Unless they fix the infrastructure and get it right this time and do it properly, it's just going to collapse again.''
IBISWorld estimates the floods could cost the trucking sector more than $210 million and the total cost to the transport sector could be more than $1 billion.
Cut roads are a further threat to Queensland's farmers, hit hard by the floods and already under stress after a decade of crippling drought.
Total flood losses in the agricultural sector will hit $1.6 billion, according to IBISWorld, with grain, fruit and vegetable, cotton and sugar crops hardest hit.
The coal rail system that links the mines of the Bowen Basin to the ports from which coal is shipped is also in disrepair.
Many of the mines they service have been shut. The rains turned the pit of Cockatoo Coal's mine at Baralaba into a makeshift dam, making giant mining trucks look like Tonka toys in a flooded sandpit.
Coal is Australia's biggest commodity export, worth about $55 billion in 2008-09, and the Bowen Basin is the richest coalmining area in Australia.
Operator QR National hopes to have some parts of the Blackwater network, which has been shut since December 27, open late next week and the Goonyella network is operating at reduced capacity.
But it could take six months for the coal industry to make a full recovery, Commonwealth Bank analysts say.
Factories have also been hit, with Dulux's main paint plant in Brisbane's Rocklea flooded.
About 200 workers will have to wait at least a fortnight before they can return to the plant and start cleaning up.
''At the moment they're being paid and being told to stay at home,'' a DuluxGroup spokeswoman said. ''We'll need all hands on deck.''
To rebuild Queensland, Premier Anna Bligh last week appointed Major-General Mick Slater, a veteran of Australia's peacekeeping forces in East Timor, to head the state's flood recovery taskforce.
He has promised a three-stage response, starting with emergency management then moving to clean-up and finally long-term reconstruction.
But the experience of Warryn Jones and his city, Ipswich, shows just how big a task rebuilding will be.
While the Ipswich home Jones shares with his wife and daughter is dry - it's on top of a hill - many neighbours and local businesses have not been as lucky. ''There's a house five doors down the road from me where all you can see is the roof out of the water,'' Jones says.
''You've got dentist surgeries in the main street, you've got a Telecom building in the main street which is under. You've got little businesses in the main street, car dealers, they're under.''
Also badly flooded is the Citiswitch business park, near the Bremer River, where retailer The Reject Shop has invested $16 million in a brand new distribution centre.
Ipswich mayor Paul Pisasale says the future ''is a worry'' but he's determined to keep the town's morale high.
''I went through the 1974 floods and I saw the effect on people. The key thing is state of mind. People are very fragile.
''Some people have lost their home, their business - some people have got two businesses that are under.
''When floodwaters hit a house, it's not a matter of water going up and down, it destroys everything. It's hard to describe until you've seen floodwater.
''You feel like crying with them and you're telling them, 'Don't worry, the rest of the city is with you, the rest of the state and the rest of the country.'''
The whole of St Ives shopping centre, east of Ipswich's city centre, is under water, he says. ''We're talking about virtually hundreds of businesses.''
Pisasale has appointed a ''tsar'' to take charge of the clean-up. ''This person will override any management of any department,'' he says.
''We've already started, we've started to get our main roads open and the traffic lights working to make sure the city can function.''
Some businesses have been ''devastated'', he says, but people are pulling together to help, with staff offering to work for free.
''Everybody has risen to another level,'' he says.