Tuesday 22 February 2011

floods in Darebin Parklands

For the last fourteen years or so we've been wishing for rain.

And this summer we have had plenty!

Our famous Australian poem says, in one stanza:
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror –
The wide brown land for me!


Droughts seem to have taken a back seat in Victoria at the moment, in favor of the flooding rains.

A couple of days ago, Penny took as down to Darebin Parklands to see what has been happening and we saw the results of the recent flooding.



In one way, the rain is beautiful, and I think no-one regrets the water that has sunk into the ground and replenished our water table, reinvigorated our creeks and rivers and added to our water storage. Look how green the parklands are at the moment:



However, there's been a lot of damage in the park and it will take work to get things back to normal.

Here's some of the fencing that protects the new plantings.



But much of it has been uprooted.



And there's junk everywhere.







And big logs thrown around.





It wasn't too hard to work out which direction the water flowed.





There's to be a clean-up day on February 26th and another on Clean Up Australia Day on 6th March.

4 comments:

Amber-Mae said...

I've heard about the terrible rain & floods in Australia. One of my hoomies work for a newspaper so she always comes home with all types of news from all over the world. That park is a huge mess. What a pity. Is the flooding over yet?

parlance said...

Amber-Mae, the floods are over at the moment, but the east of Australia is under the influence of a weather cycle called La Nina, so we don't know if the unusually heavy rain might occur again.

Unknown said...

Hi Penny - we've been having lots of rain here in Newcastle too!

You looked like you were enjoying a really good waddle in that mud! :-)

But what a shame about all that rubbish! Really! These humans! And they say that it's us doggies that need training?!

Slobbers,
Honey the Great Dane

parlance said...

Honey, you are spot on! It's the humans who make the greatest mess.