Saturday was Election Day (State Elections, don't talk to me about it - very sad face) and The Sweetheart and I went in to The Maine to vote, had a Proper Cooked Breakfast at Togs (yummo!) and then decided to go look at the spillway at the northern end of Cairn Curran Reservoir.
Cairn Curran has been dry for years, and in the last two months has gone from empty to OVERFULL on Saturday!
There is a great pic here of the dry lake bed, and Crikey has a bit written last week (they should have been here this week!!!).
Saturday when we got to the spillway we were met with all sorts of flashing lights - CFA, SES and Police - the dam was overfull and the sluice gates were being opened. The land below the dam wall was about to be flooded by the Loddon River water - and continues to head north towards the Murray River, wetting all sorts of towns, farms, houses and flooding roads on it's way.
Here is my dam on Saturday morning - the most water it has had in it in EIGHT years!
And here is my dam later on Saturday when it overflowed!
The Loddon at Newstead got too big for it's banks and fell out all over the road and paddocks.
The highway was also blocked half way back into Castlemaine at Muckleford Creek until yesterday (Monday). The woman who owns the store and lives over the river took an hour to get to work on Sunday - via Franklinford, Castlemaine and Maldon!
A lot of people - far too many actually - tried to drive through flooded roads and got stuck. Or worse - swept away. Fortunately, nobody went missing but just caused a nuisance for the Police, SES, CFA etc who had to haul them out. Or leave them there....
Coming home on Saturday from not seeing the spillway spilling we discovered our road was being washed out. All pretty scary really - we weren't in the big deal 4WD but in the very low to the ground 944, aaaghhh!!!
The water was rushing across the road on the left, down from the hill as well as rising up from the creek on the left hand side. The water on the right was coming down faster than it could get through the wire fence!
