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??"

~~--~~--~~--~~--~~--~~--~~--~~--~~--~~--~~--~~--~~--~~--~~--~~--~~--~~--~~--~~--~~--~~--~~--~~