My last post was whinging about the lack of rain and entitled “Be Careful What You Wish For”. Well, I got it. Between about midnight Sunday morning and 7 am, there was about 400 mm of rain. I’m only guessing because I didn’t get to the rain gauge until 6 am and it was overflowing. Between 6 am and 7 am there was a further 77 mm. I am estimating on previous flood levels in the creek over the last 38 years, and the rainfalls recorded then. On Sunday morning the creek was higher than I have ever seen it with debris deposited on the veranda at Blackbean Cottage. That has never happened before. I went down to the hydro past the waterfall booming and crashing with torrents of brown foaming water surging at perhaps 30 km/hr to see the damage and immediately saw the suspended roof had been washed away. This means that the hydro had been more than 2 m under the raging floods. The water was going down, but still too deep to see if the equipment was still there. I also went to see the water pump, but but that was not visible either.
I went to the creek crossing and instead of the usual 50 mm of water by 5 m wide, it was about 1.8 m deep 40 m wide and doing perhaps 10 knots. I had guests at both cottages, so went to give them both a situation report and advise them that the creek crossing was way too dangerous to attempt to drive or walk through. I also assured them that as soon as the really heavy rain stopped, the creek would go down quickly. An advantage of living at the top of a catchment area.
Then I had breakfast. I had a crisis on my hands, but until the floods went down, there was nothing I could do. The power was out, but until the roaring from the waterfall decreased from a 747 at take off, to a Fokker friendship, it would be risking life and limb to get out there. About 3 hours later the hydro was revealed and was all there. The chain I had put around the generator to augment the clamps and bolts actually held it all together. The generator was stuffed with sand, leaves and rocks and jammed solid, but I scraped it out and threw heaps more water at it, until finally it would turn. Here I would like to add an endorsement. to Stamford UK, the makers of the generator. This generator has not only been in 24/7 duty for 32 years, has not only been in the poorest service conditions imaginable at the bottom of a waterfall in a tropical rainforest, but has also been subjected to considerable abuse being swept away in floods, jammed up with sand and neglected for maintenance. I have actually attempted to express my admiration to the manufactures at Stamford, but had some trouble tracking them down as they seem to be manufactured in China these days. Way things are going now.
By late morning the creek had gone down considerably so I started trying to restore the power. Penstock pipe stuffed with rocks, transmission lines broken, pipes disconnected and every hungry leech in the rainforest after a lengthy dry spell waiting to ambush me. I first had to put up a temporary power pole as the roof that had served this function was well on its way to Innisfail. Up and down the waterfall all morning letting some water through to flush out the pipes, change nozzles, reconnect the pipes when a connection blew out etc etc. It was raining most of the time but I would have been drenched anyway as all the work was in the creek with water spraying every which way. About the middle on the afternoon I had it all together and started the hydro at slow speed to spin some of the water out of the rotor and perhaps blow a bit out of the stator with the fan. As I staggered out of the rainforest looking like a drowned rat and covered with mud and blood, I came across a couple of bewildered German tourists looking for signs of life and introduced myself as the receptionist and showed them round their cottage. Stoical lot these Germans. They did not once refer to the bedraggled state of ‘Mien Host’. I left them with the veranda still covered with debris to make sure I could get the power on before nightfall. I went down to the hydro and cranked it up to full speed and power. I could tell as soon as I did it that the generator had once again taken the abuse and was outputting electricity. If there had been no electrical output, there would be no load and it would spin at twice the design speed, the water jet would not be slowed by the turbine, and would make a hell of a racket as it hits the rear of the casing. It did not. Stamford, you beaut! I’ll have to put the roof back sometime as it is not too clever to have electrical equipment in pouring rain, but next job next day was to survey the wreckage of the pump before we all run out of water.
There was a tangle of 3 inch steel pipes, but the pump hadn’t gone far, which isn’t surprising as it weighs so much. One of the pipes had snapped and would have to be replaced, and the weir completely disappeared. Just a row of folded-over star pickets to show where it had been. In fact the bed of the creek had been re-sculptured so much that the new weir would have to be further upstream. The top length of plastic pipe gone and a brand new ‘you beaut’ filter just a couple of weeks old went with it. It had been tied to one of the star pickets, but that was gone too.
I spent the day recovering the bits that survived, wrestled the pump back to its pad, flushed things out, sqashed my pinkie between the pump and rock and generally had a really good time. Today I went into Atherton to pick up the new steel pipe I had ordered. They don’t put on threaded ends until you order it. There is the slight problem of where to put a 3 inch diameter steel pipe weighing about 70 kg and 6.5 m long in or on a Nissen Navara. Oh yes, and I also needed a 6 m length of 90 mm plastic pipe. I leave it as an exercise for my dear readers to figure out how I did it.
This afternoon I bent the steel pipe to the right shape and connected all 26 m of it together. Tomorrow the head works.
And this evening I discover that I may get more and similar floods this weekend. Great. I’m knackered already! Give us a break! I’m not the only one by any means doing this sort of repairs. Malanda, just down the road had its worst floods since 1960. Just down the road near the crater, someone lost a large dam.
I haven’t even got round to contemplating what to do about the bridge next to Blackbean Cottage being swept away or what to do with 4 km of road gullied, washed of gravel and roughened. It is nearly all council gazetted road, but I am not expecting much before the sun turns into a red giant.
There is a chance that the worst flooding will be further north near Port Douglas and Mossman. There the expected rains coincide with king tides which may back up the waters to produce coastal flooding. They are filling sandbags as I type. To my friends in these places, I know how you feel. Hang in there, relax and just cope. Nothing much else to do anyway.
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