What we know about dad and six-month-old baby found dead in a car in Queensland, & more in News in 5.

-With AAP.

1. What we know about dad and six-month-old baby found dead in a car in Queensland.

The man who was found dead alongside the body of his baby son in a car parked on an isolated track on the Sunshine Coast had failed to uphold a court-ordered custody arrangement on Monday.

The alarm was raised by the baby’s mother after her former partner failed to return him in relation to a court ordered agreement.

Council workers found the bodies of a 46-year-old Redcliffe man and his six-month-old son inside a red Holden Commodore parked near the Roys Road camping ground on the banks of Coochin Creek about 8am on Wednesday.

At this stage, detectives are treating the death of the child as suspicious and the man’s death as non-suspicious.

“It was absolutely horrific… A six-month-old child deceased with the father, they’d obviously been there for some time,” Detective Inspector Dave Drinnen said.

“The father and child failed to turn up in relation to some custody arrangements and as a result of that the mother was concerned.”

He told reporters the man and the baby’s mother had recently separated after alleged domestic violence incidents, but did not give details.

After the mother raised the alarm, it sparked a high-risk missing persons investigation but police did not issue an amber alert seeking the public’s help.

The investigation will consider why an amber alert was not issued.

News.com.au reported the bodies are yet to be formally identified. Police were unable to confirm how the two died and a post-mortem will take place.

No weapons were found in the car.

Anyone needing support is urged to contact beyondblue (1800 22 4636) or Lifeline on 13 11 14.

2. Lightning strike sets house alight in Melbourne.

Two people have escaped injury after a lightning strike set their house alight in Melbourne’s northern suburbs.

Up to 30 firefighters were called in about 7.40pm on Wednesday to battle the blaze in Penola St, Preston, caused when a bolt from the violent storms that swept the Melbourne area on Wednesday struck a domestic gas metre.

Fire chiefs say the inferno was brought under control after 45 minutes with two occupants safely evacuated and helped to find alternative accommodation.

A community warning was also issued to local residents for smoke in the area.

Thousands of homes across Victoria were left without power, with lightening also bringing a train line to a stop as the wild weather battered the state.

More than 10,000 Powercor and Citipower customers in the state’s central and west regions were left without power while in Melbourne’s northern suburbs more than 3000 Jemena customers had lost electricity supply.

Melbourne’s Upfield line was suspended after lightning strikes damaged rail equipment, with customers told to find alternative transport, Metro said on its website.

3. Black Saturday remembered 10 years on.

Ten years after the Black Saturday bushfires people in the tight-knit community of Marysville are set to return to the oval where they sheltered from the inferno.

It’s one of many commemorative events across Victoria to pay tribute to the 173 people who lost their lives on February 7 in 2009.

The fires also left 400 people injured, destroyed more than 2000 properties and displaced 7500 people.

The small resort down 100km northeast of Melbourne was one of the worst hit communities and 40 people died in and around the area.

Some of those who escaped the fires took shelter on the Gallipoli Park oval as Marysville burned down around them.

Marysville resident Daryl Hull was one of them before he fled and spent four hours in an ornamental lake.

Despite losing everything he returned to live in the small town a year after the fires.

“It wasn’t really much of a decision. I just went to Marysville, and even though it was pretty wrecked, I’ve always loved it,” he said.

Other communities including Kinglake West, St Andrews, Strathewen, Flowerdale and Yarra Glen will be holding their own services on Thursday.

But many people who lived through the blaze have said they don’t want to mark the day and would rather move on.

Community leaders have made it clear they want any commemorations to be for locals only.

“I think people will just be glad to get it over with, and then there’s no more anniversaries. We can move on,” Marysville survivor Tony Thompson said.

Numerous survivors said they will not be attending commemorative events and were not interested in speaking on Thursday.

In state parliament Premier Daniel Andrews paid tribute to the thousands of people whose lives were forever changed by the disaster.

“It really was the worst of nature but with it came the very best of humanity,” he said on Wednesday.

4. Gay couples to sue Japanese government.

A group of 13 same-sex couples in Japan will file cases against the Japanese government on Valentine’s Day to seek legal recognition of their right to get married.

The couples will approach the courts in the cities of Tokyo, Osaka, Sapporo and Nagoya on February 14, alleging that the government was denying them constitutional right to wed.

“We are not asking for anything special, nothing more than what other couples enjoy,” plaintiff Kristina Baumann told Spanish news agency EFE.

Braumann, who is from Germany, and her Japanese partner Ai Nakajima have joined 12 other couples to file the cases.

In December last year, Baumann and Nakajima unsuccessfully sought to register their marriage in Yokohama, the place where they currently live, after having tied the knot in Germany.

The two women met in 2011 in the European country, where they lived together as partners from 2016, before wedding in September 2018.

They moved to Japan, a country that has legalised gay sex but doesn’t allow same-sex marriages.

Lawyers co-ordinating the cases are inspired by the landmark Obergefell vs Hodges case in the United States that resulted in the legalisation of same-sex marriages in 2015.

Since Japanese law does not recognise unions between people of the same sex, the two women cannot claim any of the legal benefits of being married, among them a spouse visa for Baumann.

A study by advertising firm Dentsu in January revealed that 78 per cent of Japanese people between 20 and 60 years were supportive of same-sex unions, underlining a growing interest in Japanese society about the legal situation of LGBT people.

In the survey, published by Asahi newspaper, 8.9 per cent of the 60,000 people questioned identified themselves as a part of the sexual minority.

5. Clever idea saves contents of Townsville home from floodwaters.

They are the army band of brothers who showed Townsville’s Sherriff Street how to float a good idea in a flood – all thanks to a $15 inflatable pool.

A young Australian Defence Force couple who can’t be named, put their elite training to the test after their Hermit Park home was among the first to go under as the floodwaters rose last Friday.

Her car was gone, the water up was to the roof and still rising so the pair lifted all their furniture onto kitchen counters.

They went back to work, but by Saturday the couple realised everything they owned was about to go under.

Then came a clever idea – to use inflatable pools to keep their furniture and belongings afloat.

It worked like a charm.

While they returned to the army for a 24-hour shift saving others from the floods, their belongings stayed high and dry.

To add further insult to Mother Nature’s fury, on Wednesday joined by a couple of mates the band of brothers moved house using the floodwaters to float their belongings to a waiting moving truck.

“If we didn’t get it out today the mould was going to start destroying everything,” the woman said.

“The house is in a state. It had been a metre-and-a-half inside, 30cm above the door handles. The walls are falling apart, it smells bad and everything is covered with sewerage and mud.”

By Thursday morning, they will all be back at work and living in a new home in a flood-free suburb.

As one of the band of brothers put it: “You can be part of the problem, or part of the solution and a $15 inflatable pool from Kmart is the cheapest flood insurance you’ll ever get.”