Victorian floods 2022

Kirstin Nicholson. Mick Farrant’s dairy farm is on Flannery’s Road, McMillans and two thirds of his 1,100-acre property is underwater. Excess water from Pyramid and Bullock Creeks has inundated the farm. “It’s a big job moving cattle, it’s just a massive undertaking to shift a whole herd and get set up for them somewhere else. You don’t do that in five minutes,” he said.

It’s been over 10 years since a 5-year moratorium was placed on Murray crayfishing by NSW authorities for our stretch of the Murray River. Sadly, now it seems that Murray cray populations are at risk, not from fishing, but from poor water quality. Dissolved oxygen has fallen to 0.2 in the Murray at Barham and thousands of Murray cray have walked to the edges of the river from Echuca through to Swan Hill.

In our immediate area, we are lucky: the floods have been and gone while others across the State and beyond are still living with the uncertainty and dangers of rising river levels. For our region, it’s on to the recovery stage.  The Times visited the Baringhup Caravan Park last weekend to view the damage following a massive release of water from Cairn Curran reservoir.

More than three times the average October rainfall has already fallen in Narrandera this month with more than 100mm drenching Narrandera in the first three weeks of October. The deluge has caused chaos with many roads being closed.

Kirstin Nicholson. Pat and Michelle Quinn’s dairy farm at Mincha West is under real threat of flooding. The 700 head dairy property sits about 3km from Flannery’s flume, and the water coming out of Kow Swamp backs up and flows over the top of the property ... In 2011, the farm was completely inundated – and Pat is predicting this flood will be the same.

Kendall Jennings. Amidst the sound of helicopters, drones and light aircraft, the community of Kerang gathered to do whatever was needed to protect vital infrastructure as the Loddon River, Nine Mile Creek and Pyramid Creek water levels rose. Earthmoving machinery was used, along with sandbags to contain floodwater away from major roads, however, some efforts did not survive the floodwater onslaught.

When viewed together the 30 major dams across the Murray-Darling Basin are currently at 101% capacity and  hold an unprecedented volume of water in storage ... At the Authority’s invitation, the  South Australian River Murray Commissioner, Mr Richard Beasley SC, attended the meeting. He provided an update on his appointment to advocate for the health of the River Murray, Lower Lakes and Coorong.

Emergency Management Victoria, the lead agency in Victoria during an emergency event, made the decision on Monday, 17 October that a levee needed to be constructed in Echuca to protect as much of the township as possible. Based on the flood modelling available in the Incident Control Centre in Bendigo, Emergency Management Victoria had 48 hours to put the levee in place

The entire Central Victorian region has been smashed by catastrophic floods, which appear to be more serious and more widespread than the 2010 and 2011 floods. With many regions experiencing record-breaking rains over catchments that were already sodden, the end result has been devastating. Gutters have turned into creeks, creeks into raging rivers and rivers into churning brown oceans ... Geoff Palmer took this photo of the spillway at Cairn Curran last Thursday.

The East coast of the island is swollen with water – the bulging rivers purging to sea, or finding relief beyond their banks, the waters spewing and sprawling across paddocks and swirling down streets. The anxiety of sandbagging in the race to beat mother nature is real. The threat of the unknown is immense. The realisation of the brutal damage done: heartbreaking. If only we’d built more dams. Damn.