Above: Wills Terrace under water
January 10, 2015
We have now had fairly constant, and often heavy, rain for 4 days and we were closed at the museums here on Thursday after the first bout of local flooding. Mike and I moved our old Fire Truck into position in case our Memorial Pond overflows too far and threatens to flood the main hall (There is a pump which keeps normal runoff under control but if the Pond flows over too far the pump won’t keep up. Luckily, David who was here over Christmas, showed me how the Fire Truck goes and in doing so we discovered that the battery had died (despite being on constant auto charge) so we fitted a new battery and topped up the fuel in the truck and the pump.
The truck is a Fargo (read Dodge, DeSoto etc.) from around 48-52, with a petrol engine, crash box and no brakes! Handbrake works, sort of, so you can pull up from low speed! The biggest problem is when you pull on the handbrake while in reverse gear you take your knuckles off on the gear lever! The unit is kept operational to deal with any local spot fires around the vicinity as it is all partial grassland and usually very dry.
After cleaning up some internal flooding this morning we went for a few supplies, a Macca’s lunch and photos of the Todd River in full flow. It did fill in April last briefly but this is the first really heavy rain and flow since January 2010.
Todd River Gallery (Flowing): Hosted on ImageShack, click the Link or Image:
Todd River in Flood
