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.

it never rains but it pours

The horrible unseasonable heat wave has broken, and the rain has come! Lovely rain!

We went down to Darebin Parklands today to see how it is reacting to the overnight rain, and the creek was raging.

In fact, when we tried to walk along the path on the Darebin side, it was under water. I can't remember the actual path being submerged, not even in the welcome rain in December last year.



Hmm... I wonder where the snake has gone, the one who lives under this decking? I hope it relocated safely to higher ground. And I hope we don't meet it unexpectedly!

We turned back and headed for higher ground, and then went to see whether we could return to the Banyule side via the Sidney Clifton bridge. No, not a chance! It was well and truly submerged.



We went closer.



And Penny dashed ahead to have a close look. such a close look that she gave us conniptions!

dogs walk in the lovely rain in Darebin Parklands

Rain, lovely rain has been falling in drought-stricken Melbourne for the last twenty- four hours.

We set off to see how it has affected the Darebin creek in our parkland - and found the creek is reaching the top of its banks. Our favorite swimming hole usually looks like this:



But today it looked like this:



In the second photo you can see just the top of the rocks on the left of the first photo.

The creek looked rather scary so we kept Penny on lead along the path, even though it's an off-lead area. I'm glad we did, because the ball she was holding in her mouth dropped into the raging waters and she lunged after it. It took a bit of convincing to get her to acknowledge that it was gone for good!

When we got to the bridge we usually cross to get back home we realised we'd have to take the long route today:



That's the bridge in the centre of the picture, surrounded by the junk that came down with the flood waters.

And guess what? As we made our way along the path, what did we see?



Yes, our tennis ball, caught in the flotsam!

We saw other dogs walking with their people, but it seemed as if only dog walkers were out braving the rain.