Saturday, January 31, 2009

The BIG wet




The mighty Burdekin River.
It is mighty at the moment. That water is nearly 10 metres deep and it is flowing reasonably fast. It is being filled by the overflow from the Burdekin Dam and this morning the experts reckoned that water was flowing 3 metres deep above the dam spillway and that was equivalent to I forget how many Olympic size swimming pools every second. Mr Sunshine said he thought the figure was 36 pools, but we can't be sure. We can be sure that it is a lot of water. If you want to see more of our BIG wet click here for a gallery of photos from the major regional newspaper.


The amazing thing is that normally there is nothing below this bridge. Nothing except a big drop, way down to a dry sandy river bed. That is how we normally see it. Year in, year out. So I thought I would share the novelty of having a real river flowing with gigalitres (I just made that up, is it a word?) of water.
I took a few more photos while we were out today.



I couldn't decide if Groper Creek was named after the fish or the fellows who lived there, but since it is a fishing village I decided to give the fellows the benefit of the doubt.


What appears to be a small river is the road at Groper Creek. The power poles and street lighting would seem to prove there is a road there somewhere. I was just wondering how the people in the house get in and out. There is no other road. Groper Creek must be used to flooding. All the houses are on stilts and it is the only place I've seen where houses have upstairs garages. I kid you not. Some have built massive concrete ramps up to their garages which are along side their high set homes.

I wish we could send some of the water down to our drought stricken and bush fire ravaged southern states.

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3 comments:

  1. We would love some of that water!!!
    I saw that area on the news - the amount of rain you are getting is amazing!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I wonder how much is flowing over after this cyclone?

    ReplyDelete

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Mr. Sunshine & Grannysaurus

Mr. Sunshine & Grannysaurus

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About Me

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Townsville, Queensland, Australia
I have worked as a Biology lab assistant, Pathology lab assistant, geochem lab assistant, land tenure researcher, hospital and prison chaplain, parish care coordinator and part owner of a small business. I have studied some science (no degrees) and have a theology and a chaplaincy certificate. I still love science of all types and enjoy studying theology. Science and theology belong together. At present I am a work-at-home Grannysaurus.

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