10yrs Katherine Floods

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noundz

10yrs Katherine Floods

Post by noundz »

Well fairdinkum, it's 10 years since the Katherine floods (the big one) :shock: What a exciting time in my life lots of water to fish :rofl: :rofl:

I was one of the luckier ones. I didn't own a house and was staying in a mates caravan and only lost some clothes, my fishing gear :banghead: and a stereo. Not like some others that lost the lot :cry:

The night before a heap of my mates went to my parents house that was out of town (16kms) and had a BBQ and a huge p..s up :cheers: It rained that hard that we were all running and sliding on the grass with shirts off 8-)

The next day, after no sleep from the boozing :cheers: we could not get back to town due to all the creeks up :shock: All the radio stations were talking about Katherine flooding and that night "horror movie right there on my tv" :rofl: :rofl: the news showed Woolies with 3+M of water through it :shock:

For the next 4 days my mates and me proceeded to eat my parents out of the house along with drinking all of the booze they had collected over the years, you know all the wines, port, rum and scotch bottles that sit on shelves like paintings for years :cheers:

When we got to town it was a huge mess and the Army and all the volenteers did a great job cleaning up :clap: :applause: :clap: :applause: The irony was that what we really needed was some more rain to wash the place up :grin:

Back to work I went and helped clean up there :mrgreen:

So 10yrs on the town goes on and I only hope it gets stronger and better with lots of rain but not the floods :mrgreen:


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Dick
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Post by Dick »

We were traveling through Katherine back home at the time with a new car we picked up over east (old one died on the trip). Stayed overnight at the CV park and out the next day. One day later we'd have got in but not out the next day apparently. Near miss.
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Post by Blinky »

I couldn't believe it was 10 years ago today.
We too were amongst the lucky ones, we were living out along Zimin Drive, which ended up being a small island with about half a dozen homes above the water. The water got to just short of our back verandah, I moved the boat out of the shed, loaded it with gear we may need and just waited for the water to engulf our home, I thank God it stopped rising. No food, no water, no electricity, no phone, mobile battery flat for about 5 days, all this with four little kids! Had to use the swimming pool water for washing and flushing the dunny! Once all the tucker had either gone off or been scoffed the remaining residents got together and had a meeting, it was decided to go up to a trucking company yard near the highway that was under about 4 ft of water and see if they were any trucks there with food onboard. A truck was found to be loaded with food, somehow (I can't remember how) it was moved to dry ground and the food was rationed out, it was all was good after that. As soon as the water had gone down enough a couple of Mates from Darwin pushed through with a Toyota full of essentials and a generator.
Once the water receded, the job of going from neighbour to neighbour assisting those who had lost everything began, it was a heart-wrenching, emotional time. Everything covered in thick, oozing, stinking mud, countless rats and snakes in the ceiling cavities of the homes that weren't completely submerged! There were houses down along Shadforth Lane that were completely covered under 10 metres or so of water. We had peoples belongings, whitegoods, gas bottles etc floating around my back paddock.

We sold up and left Katherine 6 months later, ironically, taking a job in Darwin that was advertised in a newspaper that was brought down by the two Mates who pushed through floodwaters with gear for us.

I normally not an emotional type of person, but listening to the ABC radio yesterday morning, brought back a lot of memories and damn near a tear to the eye.
Blinky

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2rods
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Post by 2rods »

10 years goes quick..... :roll: The wife and I were camping at douglas hot springs after a day of pig shooting down that way... middle of the night I said to her.... "stuff this..we are going to get stuck here soon if it keeps raining" so we packed what we had up and put the ute into 4wd and off we went...through about 3feet of water nearly all the way to the bitumen :shock:

Had to cross hays creek at 1mtr and flowing... but we got home OK... I was shocked at how much water came down the river and at what happen in good old Katherine.... We sent down what we could to try and help out :|

The flood a few years ago (the little one) I went down there with work to operate a fire truck for the clean up.... I don't know how the people managed to keep it all together :applause: :applause:
:cheers:

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Post by BEAR »

I think I was living/working in pine creek then, we got rained off and I spent the week in the pub :drinking28: :drinking5: :drinking1: all bit of a blur really :bonk:
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