Silly Duffer

Monday Jan 31st

There are no photos of this incident and as I wasn't there, I can't describe it accurately but I'll have a go.

Before we left home, Steve turned off the water at the main tap; this was in case the excavator accidentally broke a pipe and water would would have been gushing everywhere.   Um ---- we now know that this wouldn't have made any difference to anything!

The water has gone down around the house, the power is on, phone works and all that is lacking is water.  We discussed this and decided that we would go home when Steve could reach the main tap. which is under the fence near the road, between two deep drains, both full.

For unknown reasons, Steve decided to attempt the feat today, with no one around.    He laid a ladder with the half way point on the fence, then walked along it and made it see-saw down to the ground.   From there, he was on a   narrow piece of high ground and could reach under the water for the main tap.   Success.  
His journey back was quite different.  He made the trip to the fence OK and started it see-sawing down to the ground.   At this point, something went wrong.  He doesn't know what!   He was turfed off the ladder head down and landed in a prickly bush, head down, bum up.  At least he wasn't in the water, which was neck high.   He had trouble extricating himself from the bush and emerged bleeding from neck to knee.  (Steve bleeds easily and ferociously!)   After he rang me, he got into a Detol bath, so hopefully that will help.  (We had the water on, see!)   He's cut, ripped, scratched and stabbed from head to toe and there were also some long prickles to get out with tweezers.   

The caravan won't be able to go home for  quite a while, so we'll find a place for it in town.   We'll have to alter the levee so that we can easily get in and out; Steve has been putting it in 4 wheel drive to get through.   The bouncing didn't do my back any good on Saturday.   The heat might hasten us out of here..... 42C (108F) today and similar tomorrow.

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Evaporation

Sunday Jan 30th

It was 41C (108F) today and the rest of the week should be similar.   I'm very optimistic that the water will evaporate faster.  Then I suppose that pigs might fly!

Steve took our friend Marion out to see the water yesterday and took his Mother on Friday.  He asked again if I wanted to come and I said no, as before.  I have put off going to see what I nearly lost!    But I changed my mind today and went.

As we were going through some fairly deep water on the road, we spotted a boat coming out from behind trees in one paddock.  One man was pulling it, one man was sitting and the third man was crouched over the outboard motor, trying to free it from a great tangle of weeds and junk.  Serves them right ------  who in their right mind would take an outboard motor through dirty flood water in a paddock!

Although I have looked at the photos that Steve took every day and have kept up with the comings and goings of the water, it was still a shock.  I'll never again use the word "flooded" flippantly, like "I flooded the laundry" when the washing machine overflows.  There isn't a lot of water left immediately around the house but it's very muddy.  Steve put down some paving stones so that I could get up the ramp into the house.
The water trapped inside the levee bank is pumping out very well.   The water outside the bank is running into the Piccaninny and although it has dropped about 6" in our yard and in the paddocks, it's still quite deep and running swiftly.   It's boiling along the P creek.  That's a pretty amazing sight.   On our side, it goes under the road and when it comes out on the other side, it becomes two whirlpools on either side, with a straight flowing strip down the middle.  The whirlpools come back to our side, do a big spin towards the bank on either side and go back under the road to flood the paddocks opposite us.

The water at Dominic's house is running away swiftly, down into the Piccaninny, of course.  His drive has some water over it but his next door neighbour is using it, as his own drive is not negotiable.

We took a drive 5 miles up the road towards Kerang.  Most of the land in between is flooded but there are a few farms that have completely escaped.
The road at Nine Mile Creek is very broken up.    Just after the broken bitumen, there was deep water over the road, so we assumed there was likely to be more around the corner.   A car came from behind us and ploughed into the water, very fast.    It made a number of leaps into the air, followed by thuds back down.  Idiot!  I imagine that the road was very damaged underneath.

The view of the water was breathtaking.   It stretches as far as the eye can see, on both sides of the road.    A marooned house is built on a high spot, which has become an island.  The people have a boat tied up to a post at the roadside.  I wish they had arrived home with their groceries while we were there!

The birds are delighted with their new home.   Black swans and ducks and thousands of the usual ibis.  HOW do they know when a new body of water develops?  How do they pass on the word?

More photos, including one of a young man who rode his motorbike through the water as we were on our way home.  As he passed us, I noticed that he was dripping from the neck down.

Motorbike

Was the sale before or after the flood?

The Milnes Bridge Church, no longer used.

The dairy below belongs to our nearest neighbour, Amos.  Note the levee around it.  Another protects his house.  Most of his farm is flooded and thousands of bales of hay are sodden.  He and his wife stayed at home; they have left a tractor near the road so that they can get in and out. Fortunately, they managed to keep the water out of the house.

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Good news times 3

Saturday 29th January

Good news:
1. Pumping continues and the water level is still dropping at our house.
2. The water level continues to drop at Dominic's and Mandy's house and farm, although 630 out of 640 hectares was well and truly watered.
3. Uncle Buzz rang this morning sounding quite happy.  He spoke to the owner of the caravan park where he lives and Phil took the phone to his caravan and described what he saw.   Even though there was about 4' of water around his site, because the van was quite high up, it seems as if there might have been only a few inches on the floor.   Hopefully, we will be able to clean it out and make it liveable again.

We have to spare a thought for the poor rabbits.  With nowhere to go, they are huddling together on any piece of dry land.  Steve has also seen foxes and kangaroos looking for a safe place.

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Good news and bad news

Fri Jan 28th

The levels continue to drop.  The pump is doing a great job.  Our house is no longer in danger of flooding.

Although it might be nice to keep a large pond, the water is dirty and stinky, with rotten vegetation, fish and other animals.

The new danger is to Dom and Mandy's old house on the big farm beside us.   They live in town and the house isn't occupied.    Water is running underneath it and flowing into the Piccaninny Creek.  It would need to rise 1' to reach the floorboards and for some reason, neither Dom nor Steve seem to think that it will rise that much.   That may be wishful thinking but I hope they're right.   This water is part of the "inland sea" and is coming from the back of the property.  Steve and I drove to the back of Dom's farm a couple of days before we left home and saw all the water on a neighbour's farm.  It has taken all this time to travel.
Dom is exhausted and Steve is doing the checking in his place.   He went out there at midnight and is having a sleep now, with his alarm set for 6am.   He said that there had been no rise in the level.  Fingers crossed.

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The first drop

Thursday night

Today was the first time in 8 days that Steve measured a drop in the water.  (A gentle HOORAY).    I'm not game to proclaim it from on high just yet but it helps us to feel optimistic.  
The measurement was taken from the Pyramid Creek side ------ the Piccaninny continues to rise and gush like an innocent little ditch should not do.      Shame on it!

 Normally, this is about 8' wide.

 
The water spreading out from the Loddon River is still coming our way from behind us.  It has already reached Dominic's old farm.  No one lives in that house but there are people in the house beside his.  Dom and Steve are going out to shift cattle again tomorrow.

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 Australia Day Jan 26

Steve went out to the house today, with Dom and a bunch of his friends.  They sandbagged and pumped for hours.   We are so lucky to have these people looking after us.    I'm scratching my head about how this works -----  In the case of a fire, there are professionals and professional volunteers who do the actual fighting to save a house.  It must be different with floods ----  if it hadn't been for Dom and Steve and friends, the house would have been well and truly inundated by now. 
There was a meeting in town today and it was said that the water will not peak at our house for another 2 days.  Whaaaat????  
Back steps ---- still 3 steps to go!

                                                              

Going out our drive                                                                                                       

    Dom, with a pump, on the levee bank.  Our house is behind the trees.

Steve's Uncle was 88 today.      He's returning to his caravan tomorrow to survey the damage.  We wanted to be there to help but I think we'll have to be looking after our place instead.  We had hoped to go out to lunch with him today.          

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Watering the lawn

Tuesday night.
The water from the Pyramid has turned the paddock up against our back fence into a lake and watered the back yard and carport.  The levee didn't break; it was the fault of the pipe going under the bank.

The driveway has been covered by the Piccaninny Creek on its left.   It has been an insignificant little ditch in my lifetime.  Now, fed by other creeks and channels, it has slowly crept up and spread out for quite a distance.   It is much wider on the land opposite us.  See below.   This is how the flood waters have spread so wide.  They have utilised the creeks, ditches, salt drains and irrigation channels and the bays in every paddock.  All of the water carriageways have been used to put water in the specific places nominated by the farmers.  Now the water has nominated which carriageways it will use to defeat man,  Ironic.

Sam and Patrick appear to be an integral part of this flood.  They've been all over the district.  They delighted in walking the length of the drive.  This is something that they could do safely, in our situation.

                                These last 2 photos are of the road between the bridge and Cohuna.

                                                                                              

                                                                                                                        

Steve and Dom stacked about 60 sandbags in weak spots,  put  30  cattle in a higher paddock, plugged the pipe and did a host of other jobs, assisted by the boys.    The kids are going to have a great deal to write in the "What I did during the holidays" essay next week.

Kerang was opened up for its residents who evacuated.  The Loddon Valley Highway is now open, so people have to travel there via Pyramid Hill.   The Ecacentre emptied out like magic!!     We went down there for a shower this afternoon and there were two women, two kids and a heap of workers.   There was more than enough food sent from the hospital and we were invited to eat, so we had a delicious tea of apricot chicken and jellied peaches.

Steve is very weary, as Dom must be.  Dom's opinion is that they have put in so much work that they can't stop now.    If the water rises another 2 ' like it did last night, it will be over the levee.   If it rises only a little or not at all, surely that will signal the end.     HOPE.

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Go you beautiful levee bank!!!

 Tuesday afternoon

Dom was out at our place earlier today and the water had risen 2' overnight.   Oh WOW!!
BUT ---- it hadn't gone over our levee bank.  He found a little water inside our yard and tracked it down to another pipe.
Dom phoned Steve and they have gone out there in a friend's monster Ute, to cap the pipe and put in some sandbags.
I have reservations about this trip.  Four people in the front seat, some without seatbelts --shudder.   The thought of Steve and his high blood pressure handling sandbags doesn't thrill me either.  I asked them to watch him.   If the Police are manning the road today, they might not even get through.

We heard on the news today that the Loddon Valley Highway is open at Kerang, for local traffic and emergency.  That must surely mean that the Power station is OK.  That is a huge relief.

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Monday Night

Steve spoke to Dominic not long before dusk and they hurried out to Milnes Bridge.

Dom had been there earlier in the day and didn't think that his car would survive the water but he knew that ours would.
The policeman was no longer at the roadblock so they went through, throwing up a decent bow wave, Steve says.  He was very pleased to see that the patch that he and Amos put in the bank was still holding good.  Photo shows the preparation of the patch a few days ago.  It looks a tiny job but it has worked!

There was 20 times as much water on the road as when we came in last Friday.

We have a long driveway into our house and it was completely flooded.  It seems that it was the Piccaninny Creek that was responsible for this, with some help from the Pyramid.  Attack from front and side!

Once up at the house, they were not happy to see water flooded across the paddock from the Pyramid.  They were even less happy to see water in the channel on the house side of the levee.   On searching around, they found that the levee had not been breeched.  The culprit was an old irrigation channel which ran underneath the levee bank.  The excavators hadn't seen it in the dark.   It was funnelling water into the channel at a great rate of knots.  They visited Amos, on the other side of the creek and fortunately he was able to supply a 9" plug for the pipe.   Dom stripped off to his jocks and commenced the difficult task of getting the plug into the mouth of the pipe.   Steve gave me a description of the water depth -------  Dom is 6'4";  the water was coming up to his hips.   When he bent over to work on the pipe, his mouth was touching the water; at one point, he got a mouthful of the wretched stuff.  Finally, the bucket shaped plug went in with a big, slurping, plop.  This operation was carried out in the dark, with the assistance of a torch.

So now, it's only the levee banks that were put up in the wee small hours of Saturday, that are keeping the water out of the house.  Even if it does get to the house, there are still 3 big steps up to floor level.

Now a few pics from tonight's expedition.   In the foreground, the water is in the channel, a distance of about 10 metres from our back door.  The line of trees in the background marks the Pyramid Creek.

Now a couple of photos of people standing on the levee bank at the back of the house.  It doesn't show the perspective, as Steve had hoped.  

                                                                    From left, Sam, Dom, Patrick.    

Lastly, everyone likes to have a bit of fun after their work.  Here, they are on their way home, pausing at the floodline on the Cohuna side of the bridge.   This is now a long way further from the bridge than it was when we went out there yesterday.

Gramps (Steve) with the kids

Morning can't come soon enough.   I find myself hissing inside, "Well do it now and get it over and done with, why don't you??"

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Monday Afternoon

Steve has gone shopping.  I'm waking up!!  I slept from 11pm until 2pm.  That has done me good.

Steve looked around the showgrounds for a spot where we could plug into both power and water and which would also let us have channels 7 and 10 on the television.   We have settled for afternoon shade, power, and channel 7. 
I have such a naughty, sneaky chuckle........  one of the TV stations that he can't get has non-stop sport.   That is so sad.........  not.

We have heard no news at all, so far today but I'm hoping that Steve will return with some.   We just have to be careful of rumours.   The Mayor told us about yesterday's rumour ----- Planes are sitting at the Kerang airport, filled with bombs and are waiting for the order to bomb the levees!     WOW!!   I wonder what levees, where and why!

We didn't have tea at the Ecacentre last night and haven't been there today, so one of the volunteers turned up to see if we were OK.  I explained that we would only use the services if we couldn't provide them for ourselves.   She balked at that and said that we are entitled but what on earth is the purpose of taking an entitlement if we don't need it??

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Our first day as refugees

By 8am we were down at the Ecacentre, the building where all evacuees are gathered.  (I forget what ecacentre means but it's a very large building, part of the school,  for indoor sports and arts.  It's Education, Community and something else, I think.)
It was breakfast time so people were serving themselves and the kids were playing as if nothing untoward had occurred.

We had to register with the Red Cross and fill in forms with DHS and Centrelink.  There were signs and volunteers everywhere.   The helpers guided us from place to place, almost without us knowing.  I felt as if I had wheels underneath me, gliding me from place to place.  Surely all of these people were trained to show empathy and taught the skills of positive listening???   Surely they had all attended workshops and role-played their people skills??  Well, they weren't from one particular organisation, they were from many and as a whole, they hadn't attended any courses.    They were a disassociated group,  neighbours, friends, relations and strangers, all pulling together in the same kindly, understanding direction.

We had lunch there, meeting old and new friends.  Carrot soup, delicious mixed sandwiches and vegetable slice were sent down from the hospital.    Cohuna hospital has always had wonderful cooks.   There's a great variety of fruit set out, also magazines, newspapers and a big fridge full of bottled water, juice and soft drink.   Two enormous water cooled fans are helping to keep the temperature down.  The weather has remained pretty hot.  It was still 22C (72F) when we came into town at 2am.   Today was 29C (84F) and the rest of the week is to get progressively hotter.

We had a chat with our Mayor over lunch.  He's a good bloke and very plain speaking.   He said that he can't see any way that our house can stay out of the water.  OK.  But I bought a very small packet of cereal because I accidentally left mine at home;  it will still be there when I return home ---- and it will be dry.

We took a drive out to our house and were shocked to find water covering half of the road, on the Cohuna side of the bridge.    Amos had built a wonderful levee around his large bails of hay but it was breached and he had built another.    We showered, picked up a few things and left before the excavator trapped us inside the house levee bank, about an hour.   In that short space of time, the water completely covered the road and was running swiftly.  The Piccaninny Creek had spread a long way through the paddocks opposite us and there was water in the salt drain at the front of our drive.  I don't quite know where that came from.
The patch in the levee that Amos and Steve had made, was still holding but had only about 3" before it went over the bank.

Our large, white caravan is clearly visible from the main street and we have had a number of visitors and many phone calls.  It's warming to know that other people care.   If our situation worsens, I hope I don't get caught up in my own misery and forget to care about the others.

We took a few photos earlier on but as time went by we were doing more and taking less.   I'll get around to posting them but something holds me back, for some reason.

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FLOODS

I am being pushed to move out.
I always thought that if a flood threatened me, you wouldn't see my heels for dust -- um, water.  But no, I'm resisting going.  
I will certainly depart if it looks as if the water is imminently about to invade my space ---- but at present, I don't "believe" it is.  ("Believe", as in, I have no idea!!)
The Pyramid Creek is certainly rising.  We checked on the level around midnight and then again at 7.30 this morning.  It had risen significantly but it's still about 3' below the bridge.   It has filled the lower levels of ground beside the bridge.  The tracks where we could drive on Monday are flooded back 100 yards from the creek..

I might give in and let the caravan go into town this afternoon.  We've packed a lot into it, in the way of things of sentimental value and put other things up high.

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I didn't post any of the above, for some reason.   Now that I am about to post it, it's out of date.
We took the van into town on Thursday and after many abortive attempts to get it into an awkward place in a friend's yard, we gave up and left it in the street beside her house.

Late this afternoon (Saturday), we received the 'emergency evacuation' phone messages and texts from the powers that be.  After considering it, we decided to spend one more night here.  After all, the creek level was much the same.   (You will realise of course, that authorities know what is happening upstream of us and we don't -----  but we choose to base our beliefs on nothing except our hopes!!)

Now, after midnight, we have changed our minds.  We will leave here as soon as I have done the dishes!  It's too late to wake anyone up so we'll just try to sneak into the van and go over to the showgrounds, where there is power.  On Sunday, we will report to the Evacuation Centre and tell them that seeing we are already in the Showgrounds, please can we stay there.  It's much more spacious than the caravan park and nowhere near as crowded as the Evacuation Centre ie. there's no one there. 

The reason for the change of mind was the arrival, around 10.30pm, of  four or five 4 wheel drive vehicles and a huge truck carrying a huge excavator.   Just as Steve galloped out to see what was happening, the phone rang.  It was son Dominic, Superdom, who must have visited every farm in the area in the last week, filling sandbags, shifting cattle, making levees and doing anything he could to help people.  He had decided that we should have a levee bank built all the way around the house.   "Around the house" meaning it will take up about 3 city blocks!   This is going to take hours and hours, so we might as well go.

I will have the internet set up again tomorrow but you won't get much in the way of response from me for a while.  I will probably do my trick of sleeping for 3 days!   That's what I do when I'm anxious.  Neat, huh??!!

Watch this blog for future developments.

Love to all our family and friends,

Laurie

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