Far Canal! more like Nearer Canal

The wet weather continues.  This poses a dilemma for this blogger: do I continue to post about it and thus bore folk witless or do I regard this as part of a social history and keep going? Since I have never allowed a risk of boring my audience to influence me in the past, why change?

We were awoken at 4am by the sound of very heavy rain lashing our tin roof.  This went on, and kept us awake until some time after 5am, at which point I went back to sleep until 6:45.  On going out to check the gauge we had scored 29mm.  Whiskers Creek was, not surprisingly well over our drive.


About 7am our electricity supply failed.  It stayed off for about 4.5 hours.   I found it frustrating that the utility couldn't say when it would come back but just gave a message about working to restore it as soon as possible,  I really can't imagine them saying "But we are not working to restore it asap". Anyway it came back.

At Googong the water was still not over the dam wall, but was 1.7m over the spillway, into the Queanbeyan River.  This is not good news for folk in Queanbeyan which was under major flood warning, heading for a depth of about 8m, equating it with the floods of 1974/76.  But about 1pm quite a few buildings were under water in Queanbeyan and Oaks estate.  Many roads in Canberra and the surrounding area were closed by water.  Here is a summary by the ABC Radio News.

As it wasn't raining too hard and lacking for anything else to do I went for a bike ride to examine the situation. The Molonglo at Briars Sharrow Road as heading for a PB at 1.75m by 1pm (it will get deeper if they let a lot out of the Captains Flat Dam).

For those who read my previous soggy post this image shows the water to be 35cm (about 12 inches in old money) deeper than last weekend.

The best story is about someone removing fish from the bowling club greens.  Presumably seafood will be on the menu in the near future.

Towards the end of my ride I stopped to take some photos of the Hoskinstown Plain from above.  I have never seen more than a thin ribbon of water from this positions (and that very rarely).  I will let these images do the talking The first is looking South East, the second more straight East).


From the far side of the hills to our West I was sent this image of the damage to Urila Rd by the eponymous Creek (image by Roger Farrow).  The road was still just about passable.

This image (taken on Thursday) comes from The Australian on Friday.  We will be going in to town later in the day so will try to get some updates then.

... and here is an image (frm Thursday) of Frances' Gym from the company website.

Comments

Denis Wilson said…
Queanbeyan heads the National News tonight. That's a shock in itself.
I know Queanbeyan!
Queanbeyan is not JF Kennedy (to mis-quote a Presidential debate in the USA).
I am sure you get my point.
Denis

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