philbox wrote:
airscape wrote:
Hey Philbox!
Howz the cleanups going? Was it as big a mess as expected?
It was a huge mess. I've been getting around some of the mountain creeks near here. I found a huge boulder that I know was shifted by the flood waters. The local landowner told me where it came from and it appears that this massive boulder got shifted about a hundred metres down the creek by the flood. The boulder was 5 metres by 6 metres wide by 5 metres deep conservatively. So that would make it about 150 cubic metres and at about 2.25 tonnes per cubic metres for sandstone and knock off a bit for rounded edges then that is a 300 ton boulder. There's a bigger one up the creek too. That is some serious flood water moving through that deep gully.
The railway coming up the range which normally moves a huge amount of coal and grain is still not fixed despite a massive effort to clear away all the landslides and rebuild bridges which had been swept away.
I saw a pump stating shed which was made of concrete core filled reinforced block walls which also had a 6 by 1/2 inch lintel welded to the top of the reinforcing bars completely destroyed.
Tall Eucalypt trees were gouged out of the creek or otherwise uprooted or simply smashed out of the way, all their branches torn off and their root bowl ground off and sent torpedoing down raging torrents. Now remember that these hardwood trees actually sink normally in water. They are an incredibly dense timber, extremely heavy particularly when they are growing and green. Those things hurtling down stream and bashing into things do an awful lot of damage.
A shipping container was clocked with a radar gun going downstream at 78 kilometres and hour, that is forty knots, you wouldn't ski behind a boat that fast, you'd axe yourself.
There is still an awful lot of roadworks to be done but most people at least have access into their driveways now.
That big bubble of water going down the western side of the Great Dividing Range will take months to work itself down the Murray Darling system. Lake Ayer is going to be very full after this flood and remain so for a very long time. The outback is a green oasis with top up rains still falling on occasion. You almost cannot see a red sand dune in the Simpson Desert for the shrubbery covering them.
The Great Artesian Basin has had a recharge with a lot of bores seeing an increase in pressure. These flood events do do damage but they also do a lot of good long term.
