{"id":822718,"date":"2026-07-25T09:59:49","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T09:59:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/822718\/"},"modified":"2026-07-25T09:59:49","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T09:59:49","slug":"maxwell-douglass-ipswich-childhood-was-marked-by-climate-disaster-his-response-went-global","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/822718\/","title":{"rendered":"Maxwell Douglas’s Ipswich childhood was marked by climate disaster. His response went global"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maxwell Douglas describes it like a feeling, an energy that flows through you.<\/p>\n

The official name for it is “flood”, a street-dance culture born out of the 27-year-old’s experiences growing up among the flood plains of Ipswich in Queensland.<\/p>\n

To the uninitiated, it might seem unsettling.<\/p>\n

Like a dark spirit has taken control of his body, twisting and contorting his muscles against his will.<\/p>\n

Loading…<\/p>\n

“The dance is a response to [my] upbringing \u2026 and making it have a physical release,” he said.<\/p>\n

Children of the flood plain<\/p>\n

Ipswich, a former coal-mining city just west of Brisbane, is no stranger to major floods.<\/p>\n

Longtime residents carry memories of homes swallowed by rising waters, power outages, and lives lost.<\/p>\n

In January 1974, 900 million tonnes of rain bombarded Queensland, causing Ipswich’s Bremer River to rise an astonishing 20.7 metres.<\/p>\n

Roughly 1,800 homes were inundated, 41 damaged beyond repair and two people were killed.<\/p>\n

37 years later came the devastating 2011 Queensland floods.<\/p>\n

At the time, Mr Douglas was 12-years-old and living in and out of women’s shelters with his mother and younger sister.<\/p>\n

\"Collage<\/p>\n

Queensland was devastated by flooding in 2011, killing 36 people. (ABC News)<\/p>\n

“I remember seeing the streets, the aftermath, and it was like a bomb went off, you know, it was so much debris,” he said.<\/p>\n

“It was so dirty and I saw a lot of like \u2026 people like struggling and crying and families torn apart.”<\/p>\n

As he entered adolescence, Mr Douglas searched for an outlet, a way to channel the emotions from a fractured upbringing into something positive.<\/p>\n

In 2020, he found it.<\/p>\n

\"Max<\/p>\n

Mr Douglas said the dance was an outlet for his emotions following a fractured upbringing. (ABC News: Charlie McLean)<\/p>\n

Inspired by American street dance culture, Mr Douglas started to experiment, filming himself dancing on local street corners and posting them on social media.<\/p>\n

“In Australia we have quite a long history of street dance originally from the states brought to Australia and flooding is an Australian sort of flavour that we’ve developed that sort of tells the story of where we’re from and our experiences,” he said.<\/p>\n

‘Flood’ takes off beyond Ipswich<\/p>\n

Since its emergence six years ago, the dance culture has steadily grown in popularity.<\/p>\n

Flood dance battles are now a common fixture at Ipswich’s annual ‘Spark’ arts festival.<\/p>\n

And young people outside Ipswich are now taking it up.<\/p>\n

Search for Mr Douglas’s YouTube channel and you’ll find videos of dance battles and workshops set in Brisbane, Melbourne and Byron Bay.<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/p>\n

Young people across Australia and beyond are dancing “flood” style. (ABC News: Charlie Mclean)<\/p>\n

It’s even been adopted by street dancers overseas, including in New Zealand, Japan and the USA.<\/p>\n

“It’s interesting because not everybody [doing it] is from Ipswich obviously and has the same upbringing,” Mr Douglas said.<\/p>\n

“But there’s this energy and feeling that’s resonating with people \u2026 with all different parts of it the music, or the dance, or even just the clothing and the lingo.”<\/p>\n

31-year-old Japan-born Shota Sasaki started dancing flood-style after meeting Mr Douglas in the southern coastal prefecture of Kanagawa.<\/p>\n

“Really, I’m not thinking about anything while dancing [flood], the feelings just come out,” he said.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

31-year-old Shota Sasaki said dancing “flood” style felt like drawing a picture. (ABC News: Charlie Mclean)<\/p>\n

“It’s like I’m going to draw a picture \u2026 almost becomes like that feeling of art.”<\/p>\n

Mr Sasaki recently flew to Australia to experience one of the weekly flood dance sessions, hosted in Mr Douglas’s mother’s garage.<\/p>\n

“Words, countries, that’s not the issue. Even if you’re not in your own country, through this dance and sharing of energy, everyone can connect,” Mr Sasaki said.<\/p>\n

Changing the conversation<\/p>\n

The local acolytes of flood hope it will give people a different reason to talk about Ipswich.<\/p>\n

Kaleb Addison-Ballangarry, a childhood friend of Mr Douglas, said he felt Ipswich was sometimes looked down on by outsiders.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Locals want the dance culture to change how people talk about Ipswich. (ABC News: Charlie Mclean)<\/p>\n

“I get it like in my day-to-day, like [people ask] ‘where do you live?'” He said.<\/p>\n

“‘Oh I live down in Ipswich’, and they won’t explicitly say it, but you can tell what they’re thinking.”<\/p>\n

Mr Douglas said the dance culture reflected the city’s community spirit, something that left an impression on him during the post-flood recovery in 2011.<\/p>\n

“I saw a lot people struggling and crying and families torn apart.”<\/p>\n

“I also experienced a lot of community, you know, people like strangers coming to check in on you and it was something I needed to be honest.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Mr Douglas compared the creation of the dance style to a lotus flower growing after a flood. (Unsplash.com: Ahmed Saffu)<\/p>\n

Looking back, he sees the wisdom from that time.<\/p>\n

“Lotus flowers grow from the mud, you know, after floods.”<\/p>\n

“I think it’s a metaphor for life in general, and we’ve just found a path with that with flood.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Maxwell Douglas describes it like a feeling, an energy that flows through you. The official name for it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":822719,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64,63,5214,47419,2331,8836,396943,75,18630,136,128,396944],"class_list":["post-822718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-community","tag-community-spirit","tag-culture","tag-dance","tag-dance-culture","tag-environment","tag-flooding","tag-music","tag-science","tag-street-dance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=822718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822718\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/822719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=822718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=822718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=822718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}