Flooding in Newcastle

Man, I wish I was somewhere else right now.

My back yard, garage, workshop and storage sheds have all been flooded this arvo.

Scary stuff. Water was about 6 inches from the floorboards of the house, we were all packed up with emergency rations and ready to evacuate (swim for it). Not kidding !!

Pretty sure both the cars have been flooded. Not game to look in any of the sheds.

The road out the front is strewen with abandoned cars. They either stalled of got caught behind others who did. The drivers had to help each other get out and wade to safety.

Bloody hell. This reminds me of '89. I'm pretty sure I said something stupid back then like "Newcastle doesen't get Earthquakes".

Not happy JAN !!!!!!:no:

Aaaarrrrggghhh :oo:

Been there Purple (grew up on the Snowy River flats, Orbost Vic) & feel for you.

Hope the cleanup ( :rolleyes: ) goes quickly


Cheers mate..................Sean

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Originally Posted by scooter

Aaaarrrrggghhh :oo:

Been there Purple (grew up on the Snowy River flats, Orbost Vic) & feel for you.

Hope the cleanup ( :rolleyes: ) goes quickly


Cheers mate..................Sean

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Yeah mate. I grew up on the river flats of the Williams river here, and I remember all to well all those times in the late 70s when my folks property was all under water. Damn rainy nights, trying to get the cattle up to higher ground while the waters kept on rising.

I thought I'd got away from that moving to the big smoke.:no:

It really is quite bizare here, the road out front is littered with abandoned cars. Many people were pushing on home, trying to drive along what was once a road, but at the time was a fairly substantial torrent of water. Once a couple had stalled, the rest were trapped.

Now the waters have gone down a little, I can see that the driveway and deck are all covered in that lovely film of slime and mud that follows the flood.

Sheds still look like they are a good 6 inches under.:( They will be a very sorry sight.

At least I can see most of the road out the front now.

G'day Purpleheart,

What suburb do you live in? I ask as I lived in Newcastle for a couple of years (well 4 actually - Adamstown 1 and Kahiba 3)

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Originally Posted by Waldo

G'day Purpleheart,

What suburb do you live in? I ask as I lived in Newcastle for a couple of years (well 4 actually - Adamstown 1 and Kahiba 3)

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I live in New Lambton, not far from Adamstown. My missus grew up in Kahibah.

Can't wait to see how the weather people rate this one. I've been here for a 1 in 20 year flood/downpoor, and that had nothing on this.The one in twenty was just a bit of water drizzeling down in comparison, this .....was not fun at all.

Took me 4 hours to get from Gosford to Gorokan last night (normally 30 mins).

Right now the favourite tool in my pool^h^h^h^hshed is my Ozito hot air gun!

Kmart had some big barrel fan/heaters which went from $200-ish down to $40, then disappeared when I went to grab one:~

Luckily previous encounters have resulted in most of my gear being up on blocks/bricks/wheels, but this rain was a bit more than usual!

I'm thinking of writing the date next to each high-water-mark on the bench legs...

Cheers,
Andrew

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Originally Posted by Purpleheart

1 in 20 year flood/downpoor, .

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We design residential subdivisions to be 1 in 100 year flood proof. And I imagine it would be much the same in NSW too. And the rest of Qld.
In Townsville in 98 I think, we had an almighty downpour, some places got 600mm overnight. The drains they had may have been able to cope, but at the time they were building a new bridge across Ross Creek and filled in about 10m or more each side to create temporary abutments. These constricted the flow and we, upstream got three feet of water in our kitchen.
Hope all your power tools were up high and dry, at least you'll clean the shed now and probably find some stuff you had lost.

Iam sorry being a sadist here but once the water subsides how are you going to clean everything with the water restrictions meaning no hoses.

Hell I feel sorry for you guys our road thick clay gets about 30 vehicles/day Ive helped push-pull tow 6 in the last week and they werent the 4wheel drives.

Still gotta love the country life

Just a few pics of the 1949 floods at Maitland. Sorry I haven't go any close to hand of the 1955 floods there, but the flood marks half way up the telegraph poles are pretty graphic.

Wow, the aftermarth was not pretty.

I have lived not far from maitland in my younger days and I am familiar with all those old plaques that were attached to the telegraph poles. Apparently real estate agents ripped a lot of them down, and souvenier hunters have taken most of the rest. They are few and far between now.

As we don't have water restrictions, we can use the hose to clean up. Here in Newcastle, we have had plenty of water, but this is just TOO MUCH water.

While newer estates are designed around the 1 in 100 year flood, many older parts of town are not, and the drainage and infrastructure is simply not able to cope.

A lot of furniture and odds and ends stored in the double garage are totally stuffed. The 3 storage sheds are in a bad way. The workshop looks fairly crap too. Most of the losses there will be all the dust extractors. Even though I had taken the wheels off them, and mounted them up on blocks (which I thought would keep them safe from flood) we just have never seen anything like this.

Cars are stuffed too.

Still, the house is ok for now, and we are all ok, so thats the main thing. The rest will be dealt with in time.

One of the problems I have observed is complacency, well here anyway, I was working in Langwarrin a few weeks ago when we copped a massive downpour, unfortunately all the drains were full of debris and the water had nowhere to go except across the foundations of a new housing estate, roads were flooded and the drains may as well have had plugs in them.
I have been trying to get hold of my Father near Newcastle for the past few days but to bo avail.
Not really worried about him as he will ride out anything but the service does not answer and no answering machine kicks in.

hope every thing goes alright for you purpleheart:(. in cessnock it hasnt been anywhere near as bad. we've only had a few houses flooded but quite a few roads blocked off.
does anyone know the cessnock basin? apparently it was filled all the way to its rim on friday night ( its appprox 400m by 400m by 10-20 )

i've spent about three hours diggin trenches for the water to run in too in our back yard and thankfully no water has got into the house.

i was watching the news on friday night and last night and couldnt believe some of the stuff that was happening in newcastle. the pasha bulker and the other ships being pulled inland, stoopind people driving in water above the tops of their cars ( stupid gits ), roads collapsing etc.

whats the weather like in newcastle now? its slightly over cast but still sunny and warm up hear ( well at least atm ).

cheers

Glad to hear things are ok in cessnock mate.

Not so good in Maitland, as the waters are still rising, and people are being evacuated.

The sun came out for a little while today in Newcastle. Unfortunately that only lets you see the damage more. But we definatley need more sun, just to dry things out. That would make the cleaning up so much easier.

Hang in there, as long as you and your families are in one piece the rest can be replaced. You've got the floods, we had the fires - in the future the stories will something to tell your grand kids.

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Originally Posted by Wood Borer

Hang in there, as long as you and your families are in one piece the rest can be replaced. You've got the floods, we had the fires - in the future the stories will something to tell your grand kids.

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Yep, your right mate. While ones own loss is upsetting, it quickly gets put in perspective when you see those who have done so much worse, and lost so much more.

Once the TV came back on, and the newspapers came out, we were able to see the full extent of what had happened.

At the time, we had no idea it was so widespread.

Just walking down the street and seeing all the blank faces of those coming to grips with what just happened, and what might have happened is going to be "one of those stories"

Ph.