Lotus Creek service station battered by flash flooding

All he has left is the clothes on his back.

For the last 35 years he has provided food, fuel and accommodation to workers and visitors along the Marlborough-Sarina Road. 

But on Wednesday he was forced to sit in the top level of his house for 12 hours and watch everything he had worked so hard to achieve, wash away.

As ex-Tropical Cylone Debbie lashed north Queensland, somewhere upstream of the Lotus Creek rest stop the banks had been broken.

Noticing the water beginning to rise, Mr Petrie placed his two beloved German Shepherds in his car as he walked back in ankle deep water to turn the generator off.

Minutes later he returned in waste deep water but his car had been swept away.

In the best interest of his own safety he began swimming back to his A frame home beside the shop, scrambled up the stairs and sat upstairs with only his mobile phone and a picture of his two-year-old grandson Joseph.

After neighbours and family members hadn’t heard from Mr Petrie since his last Facebook post about the rising water, a chopper was sent up over the area to find the man in the middle of the devastation waving his arms.

Speaking on his behalf, his daughter Lysandra Petrie said he had just finished doing a renovation for a new kids area and had spent most of his life building the rest stop up to what it had become.

“It was eight foot through the shop,” she said.

“The next morning he was able to go and have a look but the walls had been ripped out.

“The whole northern side of the house has gone.”

Mr Petrie also had a boar, sow, piglets and birds in his aviary but all were lost.

He is now staying with neighbours but Lysandra said he remained up beat.

“If it was me, I don’t know where you would start,” she said.

“He joked with the friends he is staying with that he will run the shop out of a donga if he has to.

“I think he is determined to get it up and running.” 

A go fund me page has been set up with more than $4000 raised already.