Overflow at the Queanbeyan Weir

The Queanbeyan weir was originally established to provide a water source for the town, but has since been adapted/adopted as a means of making the centre of town attractive (see entry for damming in this page).  I have commented elsewhere about the desirability of the area for platypuses.

So it was with great interest that I took this image of water flowing over the weir this afternoon.

This does, of course, mean it has been raining again.  Basically it has been precipitating for two days giving us 54mm by dark on 29 November (and an as yet unknown amount thereafter).  More is forecast over the rest of this week. The forecast was spot on.

For traditionalists, one must record that a horny handed son of toil was sitting in a truck, and reading a newspaper, looking down at the weir.  I did not ask if his name was Clancy, nor check to see if his thumbnail had been dipped in tar.

A couple of days later I decided the time had come to decide if the COG outing to Yanununbeyan was to go ahead.  Here are some images of the roads in the area.

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 Not surprisingly the event was cancelled by me.  (As reinforcement Whiskers Creek was over our drive when we went out shopping a little later.  That is what happens when you get 87mm of rain in less than 4 days.)

The images below were collected on 3 December (ie the Friday of the week in which the above were taken).  The first shot is of the Queanbeyan River downstream from the weir (looking downstream from the Morriset St bridge). 

The clump of trees on the RHS of the image usually mark the LHS of the River.  I have never seen it this high before (but see below for a historical comment).  I suspect that part of the problem is that the Molonglo is so high water cannot escape from the Queanbeyan River.

The next image is looking down on the Weir. Usually there is a second wall about 30m downstream: that has been totally submerged.

Some of the local birdlife voted with their webbed feet.  Surprisingly they and the small dog totally ignored each other.

One of the historical comments about the early days in Canberra was the bodies being washed out of the Queanbeyan Cemetery and floating down the Molonglo into what is now Lake Burley Griffin.  We called in their to check how close the more recently departed were to getting a trip.  My guess is that the river - visible as brown sludge in the background - still had at least 5m vertical to get to the fence around the Cemetery.   (An historical sign did refer to the Cemetery getting flooded in the 1880s so the yarns are not entirely an Urban Myth.)

Heading back towards home we swung by to have a look at the Molonglo River at Briars-Sharrow Road.  An image of this from Wednesday is further up this post.  I don't think a Land Cruiser would have got across this unless it had a very good snorkel on both inlet and exhaust pipes (and the driver had extremely good faith in his memory of where the road went).  Compare the position of the water relative to the "One Lane" sign!