Snow days are more fun

Last Thursday night Jon and I were just turning off the heater and lights and preparing to go to bed when Jon stuck his head out the front door to take a look at the rain which was pelting down noisily on the roof and windows.

The Bureau had forecast thunderstorms for the evening, and I'd been down at Clare's earlier where massive sheets of lightening were illuminating the night. The BOM had also told us to expect a lot of rain and by 11:45pm it sounded like the weather bureau was again true to its word.

‘I need you out here!’ he yelled!  By this stage the water was surging both down the drive and down over the grass. Jon was attempting to sweep it away from the sliding doors and around the side of the house with a cricket bat, but he was fighting a losing battle and it was quickly building up and up against the glass doors. I  quickly pulled on my gum-boots and grabbed a couple of buckets which were also by the door (we’d been using them for a running drill a few weeks earlier) and rushed out.  For the next 20 minutes or so we ushered litres and litres of water from the overflowing drain around to the side of the house.  When it started to look like we were winning the battle I gathered some pine sleepers and we built a makeshift flood bank on the drive so that we could divert some of the water before it reached the bottom of the drive.  With that, and the rain easing off, we were soon able to take a break and go inside and get dry.  By this point a lot of houses had lost their power but we were pretty lucky to not lose it (or internet) at all.

With the rain easing and the drain able to keep up with the flow we decided to go to bed.   Our break was shortlived though and 15 minutes later we heard the rain get heavier again so we had to get up. This time we had a chance to put on rain trousers and rain coats before going outside to check the situation.  Our pine sleepers were doing their diversion job and the drain was coping much better but there was still a lot of water around.   We didn't need to bail so I decided to check how things were going under the house.  

As I walked around to the back garden I could hear what sounded like a raging torrent from the lower corner of the garden. This turned out to be the big concrete stormwater drain that straddles ours and our neighbours fences.  The concrete top was being pushed upwards from the force of the water and the water was gushing out down into our back neighbours houses.  There wasn’t much I could do about that (except feel sorry for the neighbours) so I headed under the house.  Unfortunately it wasn’t great under there - water had found it’s way through the hill of dirt and we had 2 muddy springs with flowing brown muddy water right at the back of the Oslo room.  There was also another large puddle forming near the door to the Oslo room where water was somehow flowing into the room through vents into the external brick wall.  Jon and I spent the next hour carrying out buckets full of muddy water and also moving as much stuff as we could out of the way or off the floor.  Luckily we had tarps and plastic sheets we could put down to protect the floor from both the muddy water, and our mud caked feet as we tramped across it with our buckets.

The next day - the drain is the black strip across the front of the sliding doors, and that's our makeshift pine-sleeper flood diversion system! 

Once we’d all had a bit of a sleep-in we got stuck into cleaning up the mess and moving everything out of the Oslo Room.  Zali worked for a few hours filling in the deep erosion trenches with the gravel that had been washed down the lawn, while Jett helped us move every last thing from the storage and Oslo Room area up to the games room so that it didn’t go mouldy while the mud dries out. 

All that was just over a week ago, and although I’ve driven by some damaged areas on my way to work,  today was the first time I had a good look at the damage around the Whitewater Creek area (which was my cycling route to work).  It was a mess.  Since we moved here 10 years ago the council has been steadily improving the creek and surrounds with plantings and landscaping and general track improvements. All of that is gone. As are people’s fences and landscaping and in one case a garden shed had even found its way downstream.  The bike path is completely destroyed in some areas and I can’t see things being back to normal for a long long while.

Amongst the trees are tents, BBQs fences, wheelie bins.. 

The house that owned this section of fence is 50 metres up the track. I wonder if they can just replant their fence?

The bikepath now has some obstructions..

and where it isn't obstructed, it's a foot deep in mud..

I also noticed that the house that would have been getting our run-off had all their carpet out on their lawn, so as we expected they got hit pretty bad!  I think nearly everyone who lives on a hillside in kingston had some water damage, particularly to their under house areas.  The creek area is littered with things that have come out of garages and basements, including this trophy which had come at least 300m down the creek from the nearest house.

In my entire time living in Hobart I've never experienced rain like that - it's interesting that kids have had a day off school for snow just a few years ago, and now they've had one for flooding as well. We used to think that Sydney got all the exciting weather - I wonder what's next? 

Anyway - we appreciate that we have had minimal losses from this major event. There is some damage to the Oslo room floor but not even enough to make an insurance claim  - it would have been a completely different case if we'd slept through it as lots of people did.  Although the fact that we evaded serious damage doesn't really make up for the fact that the local environment is all but destroyed - I'd have happily given up the Oslo room for Whitewater Creek!  Hopefully time (and cash from the local council) will heal.