Water and Death and Fire.

UPDATE:
28-01-2019. Third mass fish death in Menindee in less than two months.

(source)

What that photo shows is not scum floating on the water. It’s small fish, dead.

Witnesses to both events give their impressions:

“This is likely worse than the last time,” said local Graeme McCrabb, who on Monday morning was down at the water’s edge at the back of the township, above Weir 32. (here)

“What we are seeing is probably the last lot of fish that are here now,” he said. “There will be none left.” (here)

Frankly, I’m lost for words. We may have seen how a river dies.

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A few days short of breaking the 1975 record for longest delay, the monsoon seems to have finally arrived at the Northern Territory and Far North Queensland, although only in the latter rain has actually fallen:

(source)

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In a continent where 50% of its surface receives a yearly rainfall of at most 300 mm, 400 mm in less than 24 hours -- like some areas are reported to have received -- could perhaps qualify as “extreme weather event”, in the scientific jargon of climate change. At any event, those rains do justify flood alerts and caused power outages.

No relief, however, is forecast for the southern half of the NT, currently under a heatwave and drought.

Last year rainforests in Far North Queensland were burning, and last December Cairns was hit with the mass death of over 20,000 spectacled flying foxes. Experts were calling to have that species re-classified, from vulnerable to endangered, if not critically endangered. That rain may have come too late.

UPDATE:
29-01-2019.
Daintree River flooding: hundreds cut off after deluge breaks peak record

Ferry crossing in far-north Queensland closed after 500mm of rain in 24 hours pushed river to highest level in 118 years
By Australian Associated Press. Last modified on Mon 28 Jan 2019 13.23 AEDT

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Speaking of dying bats, this from South Australia:

(source)

Like all flying foxes, those flying foxes are pollinators and that particular species (grey-headed flying foxes) is already classified as vulnerable.

About 2,000 farm chickens also died, in spite of the farmers' efforts to save them.

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At the southern end of the continent:

(source)