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Tag Archives: Tuross River

Floods

11 Monday Jan 2016

Posted by morselsandscraps in floods, photos

≈ 16 Comments

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Tuross River

Last week, heat threatens fires. This week, floods send vast amounts of water from the mountains to the sea. One bridge at Cadgee along the Nerrigundah road washes away; water laps at the edges of a caravan park; and further north about forty campers are stranded, including a baby. When the rain first pours down the grass gutters near home flow so fast the grandkids ride their body-boards down the hurtle.

We indulge in a bit of flood tourism and spend about eight hours visiting and revisiting places we know well, barely recognising them under pelting water. At lunchtime, just before Tyrone Bridge goes under, my grandson and I walk across it, water spurting through the boards, and he rescues a body-board caught up against its edge. Later, when we return with the rest of the family, the bridge is thoroughly submerged and the water is still rising. By the time we finish rubber-necking, the chance of getting home along the Eurobodalla road is slim, so we drive at dusk through the bush along Big Rock Road, to be stopped by a fallen tree. However, C-Ridge, the forestry road along which we found sun orchids not so long ago, gave us a clear run to the highway and took us home to a late makeshift dinner.

By 7 the next morning we were out and about again, checking the same spots as yesterday. Our wine-above-the-river spot has become a wine-well-below-the-river spot, and even J, who knows the river reserve intimately finds it hard to pinpoint its exact position. K, my animal-loving daughter-in-law, is in the water up to her knees rescuing grubs and insects and rodents caught up in a drama bigger than us all.

By lunchtime not everyone is keen to see the river enter the sea, so S and I venture off alone, stopping at the Tuross bridge where it would have been no trouble to launch the boat – if you had a death wish. At the opening the water is wild; out to sea are standing waves; at the edges sand drops away in chunks. The water is murky and roiling.

At home, Potato Point beach is no longer pristine: it’s black with tree-trunk detritus.

On the third day the rain eases off, the water drops and wetness becomes a nuisance: piles of damp dirty laundry; no chance of a week camping upriver by the clear calm waters of the Tuross for my visitors; and beans sulking under the vegetable dome because they’ve been watered too much.

By Sunday evening our wine spot is seven metres above river level again, and we sit in early evening above its rapid flow, relishing bank-to-bank water.

 

Tuross River flood peak: Tuesday

 

River rising

 

The tree where we drink wine

Cheese factory bridge

Going under

Bridge across Highway 1

River joining the sea

Potato Point debris

 

Water receding: Thursday

 

Levels dropping: Saturday

 

Mud mark on leaves

 

Wine-spot 7m above river: Sunday

 

 

 

 

 

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The river rises

13 Tuesday Jan 2015

Posted by morselsandscraps in Eurobodalla, photos

≈ 17 Comments

Tags

January rain, Nerrigundah, Tuross River

We’ve had unseasonal rains. The river is flowing fast and clean, creating a big pool where we loll about and cool off on steamy days. On Saturday, we drive along the Nerrigundah road, where I walked in October and November, and see the landscape transformed. Where there were sandbars, there there is now a wide river, and the grass is an intense unAustralian green. At the bridge, the water is deep and bank to bank with no sign of the sun-dappled rocks under its hurry. The road near the causeways has been washed away and everywhere there are signs of flood wrack: uprooted trees, tangles of vegetation, and a washed-away car trailer. Pelting rain fills the gutters with rushing brown water, but eases off as we crest the mountain.

river #
river then #
Murphy's Bridge downstream, November
Murphy’s Bridge downstream, November
Murphy's Bridge, downstream January
Murphy’s Bridge, downstream January
riverwrack
DSC06488
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The river road 9: Grandeur and a river crossing

11 Tuesday Nov 2014

Posted by morselsandscraps in Eurobodalla, photos

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

flowers, rockface patterns, trees, Tuross River

Suddenly on this stretch of road the trees become bigger, towering up out of the drop down to the river. Wattles are in the splendour of full bloom, and so are ti trees and white mint bush. The air is dense with the buzzing of bees and with perfume, heavy-sweet and spicy. Below, the swishing of the river in a series of small rapids. No familiarity on this stretch, after more than twenty years.

A car stops. The driver leans over, looks at me, and says “I know you.” His name I remember; his face has changed. On the edge of the road past and present meet, and I’m incapable of giving him the required directions in the jangle of adjusting old memories. What do I remember? Offending him by refusing to let him carry my bag after a P & C meeting in Sydney in 1978. Did he really sulk for 300 km? Is this a story I’ve made up? I don’t want such intrusions on my grinning solitude.

The pink rocks of the cutting soon fill my mind with memories in the making, and I relax into the beauty of the morning. I pause on the bridge, noting that sand has taken over, where there were once pink rocks. The river brushes noisily over pebbles, and floats circular mats of algae. A man on horseback nods hello, and the cutting still towers, revealing tree roots coiling from crevasses.

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Green mullein: Verbascum virgatum

Old man's whiskers and lichen
Old man’s whiskers and lichen
Crabapple?
Crabapple?
Pomaderris (Buckthorn family)
Pomaderris (Buckthorn family)
?
?
Bracken unfurling
Bracken unfurling
Peaches
Peaches
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Senna pods
Senna pods
Wattle pods
Wattle pods
Clematis
Clematis
White cedar
White cedar
Wandering jew: Tradescantia fluminensis
Wandering jew: Tradescantia fluminensis
?
?
Melaleuca
Melaleuca
?
?
A bridge for Jo, queen of bridges
A bridge for Jo, queen of bridges
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Snake heading for skeletonhood

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The river road 5

30 Thursday Oct 2014

Posted by morselsandscraps in Eurobodalla bush, photos

≈ 2 Comments

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ferns, grasses, honeysuckle, Tuross River

This walking project was supposed to be a weekend adventure. Here am I, heading off just after wallaby time on a Wednesday morning. OK, I needed tomato paste and ground coriander from that general direction, but it would’ve been quicker not to walk as well.

But I walked. Today, along the course of the river, on a road with the hillside towering above me and dropping off beneath me, and the perfume of honeysuckle thick in the air. I caught a quick burst of the whipbird’s song, the mooing of cows, and then the approach of the school bus. Beneath the overhang of the cutting were wasp nests, and flourishing grasses, and almost vertically up, slim eucalypts. Below me the river wound, brown and sandy, but still moving in mini rapids in spots. Here were tree ferns, clinging to steepness and the russet unwhorling of their fronds. Kangaroo grass dropped its seeds and woggled in the occasional breeze.

My turn-back point today was marked by a signpost, a clump of letterboxes, a bracken-smothered track down to the water, and a patch of purple so vivid it resisted the camera.

The cutting

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The river

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Ferns

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Honeysuckle

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Turning point

Flowers and grass

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?
?
?
Ozothamnus diosmifolius: Ball everlasting
Ozothamnus diosmifolius: Ball everlasting
Ozothamnus diosmifolius: Ball everlasting
Ozothamnus diosmifolius: Ball everlasting
Ozothamnus diosmifolius: Ball everlasting
Ozothamnus diosmifolius: Ball everlasting
Casuarina
Casuarina
Casuarina
Casuarina
?
?
Kangaroo grass
Kangaroo grass
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The river road 4

28 Tuesday Oct 2014

Posted by morselsandscraps in Eurobodalla, photos

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

eucalypts, ferns, Tuross River, wildflowers

The place where I weekend is in the bush, 20km from my home by the sea. My current weekend walking project is to walk in stretches along the river road between Eurobodalla and Nerrigundah. I take the car to the farthest point I’ve walked to, hop out, and continue on. This is something of a pilgrimage along a road from my past, and it’s giving me great pleasure.

This week, I left the car at the top of Tallyho Hill and set off along a dirt road, with a drop off the edge into a steep gully. I heard the song of a lyrebird and the brief laugh of a kookaburra (unless of course that was the lyrebird too.) The bush was noisy with chirrupings, whistlings, and the vibrating whirr of a pigeon takeoff. The eucalypts sported long ribbons of bark and there were signs of rainforest: crinkle-edged leaves, vines and tall tree ferns. Everywhere in the bush, tall wattles with their pale yellow balls and their sweet smell. The sky a bleached grey with that disturbing glare and lack of substance. I walked down the hill around the twists in the road. On one side a gully: on the other side a steep bank, a rocky cutting rich with ferns and flowers – maidenhair, bracken and pinky rasp fern; faded schelhammeras, tiny white star flowers, purple and white violets, purple dianella with yellow-orange stamens, the gleaming white flowers of branching grass flag. At the bottom of the hill, a bridge and an underpass for cattle, the paddocks an astonishing green for this time of year. An assemblage of grass and flowers decorated the buffer at the bridge. Sandy curves of the river appeared and then retreated again: a vivid patch of purple fan flowers, delicate sprays of dianella in bud, yellow goodenia, and the richer yellow of hibbertia, with its splendour of buds. Occasionally the heat was relieved by a delicious breeze, more noticeable because the hill was generating an unaccustomed gentle sweat.

Only one vehicle passed me in an hour and a half on a Monday morning. I have now walked 8km of the river road.

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tree fern
tree fern
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FLOWERS

Dianella
Dianella
Dianella
Dianella
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?
Native violets
Native violets
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Fairy fan flower
Fairy fan flower
Branching grass flag
Branching grass flag
Scelhammera
Scelhammera
Hibbertia
Hibbertia
Goodenia
Goodenia

Nature’s garden at bridge buffer

Along the Tuross River

Quartz in the cutting: once gold-mining country

On the edge of the road

RIBBONS OF BARK

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Back up the hill beside the gully

I’m joining Jo’s Monday walk, with this ramble along the river road, the fourth in a series.
http://restlessjo.wordpress.com/jos-monday-walk/

 

 

 

 

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