The House(s) of Fran_mart

 Our plan was to drive back on 24 March.  We decided to stick to that despite knowing that: Mallacoota had scored (according to the BoM) 107mm of rain; The power was out (but due back at 1100  hrs); and Lakeside Drive was closed due to fallen trees. In Canberra the sun had come out, mixing with a final shower from the Brindabellas. I thought it would be interesting to take photos of the rivers we passed/crossed on the trip, to record how high they were.  We didn't bother with the Molonglo as it was just brown and within its banks at Dairy Road.  The first major stream was the Bredbo River.  The safety barriers were a view-obstructing pain in the Jetta but the way the poplars are poking out of the water shows that it was well above normal. The Numeralla River was similar.  I can remember seeing this much wider - on this trip the secondary channel was still dry. As we turned on to the Snowy Mountains Highway at Cooma a couple of buses passed in front of us and I expected to catch and

Not as bad where we are (currently Canberra) as many places but still wet.  A number of places on the coast North of Sydney have had over 800mm in the last week.  Here is a map of rainfall for the week ending 16 March. it suggests that the soil was already well hydrated before this lot started. Here is a map of rainfall for the last 7 days. The dark blue patch in far NW NSW includes Tibooburra which copped 103mm on the 22nd.  BoM has annual rainfall data for Tibooburra airport for the past 21 years: for 10 of those years the ANNUAL rainfall has been <150mm, with a low of 49mm in 2002. On our way up to Canberra we noticed that there was a lot of water in the Bombala River: that reflected rain about 50 km upstream on Brown Mountain. Yesterday when I drove past Scrivener Dam water was being released in anticipation of what was to come. Today (after 30mm yesterday and 13 mm so far today) they had dropped a sluice gate to allow more out. By about 1800hrs they had opened a second gate! (

On 10 March 2021 HMAS Choules came back to Mallacoota to adopt the town as its ceremonial (perhaps spiritual is a better word) home.   We saw her well from the Lagoon boardwalk on our morning walk.  I had wondered about the name of the ship: all is explained in this very interesting Naval page .) From the material copied to the Mallacoota Community Facebook group it was apparent that the main event was due to happen at Bastion Point at 2pm.  Just before 1pm things got a little noisy at home. I had assumed this was an eminent person arriving but it was in fact one of the helicopters (an MRH -90 Taipan I think) used in the aftermath of the fire, being flown by the crew who flew it at the time. They had re-united for this event.  It was the pilot's last day in the Navy and he put on a show for the town. As things were happening I took myself down to Bastion Point a little earlier. The helicopter zoomed around quite a bit over land and sea ... .. before going for a snooze on the afte