2010 Flooding on a property on the intersection of Woodbury & Bungundarra Roads

The last 2 days have seen some huge rainfall figures in the Yeppoon region, with Pacific Heights & Bungundarra receiving over 220mm. Most areas within 30km of Yeppoon (including Byfield) have received at least 90mm.

Beach erosion due to high tides and runoff has occurred in some areas, although Kemp Beach has been hit the hardest. Access to Kemp Beach by its southern entrance and carpark is limited, the easiest access is from the northern end at Rosslyn Bay.

I hope to have photos of the erosion up by next weekend.

Flooding has effected road closures in various low spots around Yeppoon & Gracemere, below is a list current as of 5PM today (1st February 2010). Not mentioned in the list is the closure of the two lower lanes on Farnborough Road near the Bluff. This post will be updated tomorrow with reopened roads, etc.

Yeppoon Road Closures

• Byfield Road at Stoney Creek and at Merrivale
• Coorooman Creek Road at Coorooman Creek
• Daly Creek Road, Bundgundarra
• Old Byfield Road at Limestone Creek (Mt Rae end)
• Barmaryee Road
• Bungundarra Road at Daly Creek
• Bangalee Boat Ramp beach access
• Alpis Creek Road

Gracemere Road Closures

• Malch – 9 Mile Road
• Alton Downs – 9 Mile Road
• Fairybower Road
• Aermby Road
• Capricorn Street
• Middle Road
• Macquarie Road
• Johnson Road
• Bajool road 1/2 covered with water – may also be cut very soon at Raglan and Marmor

This morning I was looking over the local news for the Yeppoon area and saw this Morning Bulletin article about it.

The man has been the 3rd person to die in the Central Queensland area in the New Year period.

The owner then said that he had something very special to show us, something that most people will never see in their lifetimes. He then took us to a cage with two young Cassowary chicks inside. More information on Cassowarys can be found at the Queensland Government’s Enviromental Protection Agency website, as well as Wikipedia.

Cooberrie Park currently has more protected Cassowarys in captivity than any other park or zoo (besides Australia Zoo, which has 5 as well) in Australia. They currently have 3 adults and 2 chicks.

Below are the photos. Sorry for the blurry black lines on the pictures, they’re a result of the wire getting in the way.

The top part of the Cassowary Chick. The head looks a bit like a chook’s head but the body shape and colour is totally different.

A full view of the Cassowary. Notice the very distintive black markings running along the body.

The two chicks together in a corner.

Another view of the Cassowary chick.

At the moment the panoramas are only in JPEG format, and there a not many 360 degree views. However I plan to add 360 views in the Quicktime VR format, which allows people to pan and zoom around in a full circle.

Anyway, please have a look at the photo panoramas and tell me which ones you like best. For your information, I photographed most of them using my Canon A720 and the included photo stitching software.

A really pretty flower in the gardens. I think I’ve finally cracked taking photos of flowers. I’d say the basic rules would be: Put the foreground in focus and make the background blurry, get real close in on the flower and try to shoot in sunlight!

On the way back from Byfield we also dropped in at Red Rock State Forest, which we’ve camped at before. It is known for being infested with mozzies, but because of the cool weather there weren’t too many around. The creek there is really pretty, although the rangers have fenced it all off because of crocodile sightings.

The next stop before home was Cooberrie Park, which is a wildlife sanctuary (a bit like Australia Zoo on the Sunshine Coast – Bindy and Terri have actually visited Cooberrie Park BTW) so that my sisters could get some rats from the owners. They will breed them and then give Cooberrie Park some of the babies. Anyway on the way out we nearly walked past a Tawny Frog-Mouth Owl, which was just sitting on the railing.

It didn’t fly away when we approached, and a staff member said that we could pat it! I think it had been hand-reared since baby-hood. Patting the owl was like patting any bird, except if you touched the Owl’s beak it would open up it’s mouth (which is really wide and yellow inside) and gives you a very gentle bite.

Patting the Tawny Frog-Mouth owl. It has really cute little feathers sticking up from it’s head as you can see.

This time looking very alert. Maybe it had just seen the rats .

Taken on Friday, this photo is looking in the Yeppoon direction. The new bridge is just to the left.

A closeup of the broken-up concrete and steel.

Looking in the other direction.

This was taken a bit more recently, and now they have cleared away all the concrete and steel rubbish.

Well anyway, I’ve already just told you the two main things that they’ve been doing: tarring the section of road near the big new bridge down the road and installing two traffic lights. I think that they installed them because the bridge isn’t quite wide enough for two cars to pass. The traffic lights will alternate the traffic so only one direction can cross the bridge at any time.

There is a bit of division in the family between those who think that they are going to be building another bridge and those who think that the current bridge is not going to get any company at all. There is some evidence in favour of the 2 bridge theory, in the form of a workmen who says they are going to build another bridge. However I’ll guess we’ll soon see for ourselves. Onto the photos.

This is the first traffic light just up from the bridge. I didn’t get a decent photo of this traffic light with the tarred road so I’m using these pics taken just before the road was tarred.

Looking down towards the bridge from the Yeppoon direction. Again, this photo was taken just before the road was tarred.

This is the second traffic light on the Yeppoon side.

This shows the bridge after it had been tarred. I expect it will soon be open to traffic.

Yesterday, I launched it at http://www.organicmacadamias.net.au/.

They already had a logo, however the “organics” tagline was written in quite a nasty font. I just replaced it with the same text written in Julius. In addition to the normal static pages, PHP is also used to power the order and contact forms.

Please check it out and leave a comment with your thoughts. And remember, if you want a healthy alternative to commercially grown macadamias sprayed with pesticides and the like, buy some organic macadamias off Nutberry Organics!

A screenshot of the Nutberry Organics website.

[tags]design, web design, launched, organic macadamias, macadamia, farm[/tags]

This shows the extent of the floodwaters that came into our paddock, as well as our neighbours paddock.

The corner of the road where the floodwater was running over. You can see how the water had uprooted some of the grass and rolled it back. The view in the photo above is just to the left of this.

The damage caused by the floodwater to the edge of the road. It has now been repaired with some concrete. Don’t forget that this road will soon be replaced by the new one, so it isn’t the most tidy repair .

The floodwaters down at the big new bridge. The deepest point in there would be over my head, and flowing very strongly.

Looking on the other side of the creek, over the old bridge, you can see just how much water there was flowing through there.

This is amazing. Have a look at the grass on the other side. See how high the water has been? That’s right, the little bridge was actually submerged under the creek! It probably only lasted an hour or less like that however, because as soon as the rain stops the creek starts going down.

The roadworkers are in the photo because something from the new bridge had been pushed off by the floodwaters and hit the old bridge. They were then checking it for structural damage. None was found, though.

This is the worst-hit area around our place. Located about 3km away from us, this flooding probably extended for 500 metres or more. The deepest place on that road would be around 2 metres. While I was there locals kept driving up and taking photos of the flooding.

[tags]adelaide park, woodbury, bungundarra, rain, bridge, creek, water, flooding, flood[/tags]

The title says it all. Currently we are having some very heavy rain as a result of a tropical low that is moving down the coast. Heaps of roads are closed, including the one on our corner. So now we are basically unable to drive into Yeppoon. About half an hour ago I put my swimmers on and went outside to look at the flooding. What I saw amazed me, because this is the first time in my life I’ve seen flooding personally.

I had previously prepared some alternative pictures for this, but that was yesterday before we got the real flooding. So I dumped those pics and I am using the photos that I took half and hour ago. They reflect what is happening here right now. Sorry for the blurriness of some, I had to wrap the camera in a bag to protect it from the rain. BTW a local who was just outside our driveway waiting to get through said that this area hadn’t had flooding like this for 17 years!

The road at our corner is currently closed, although 4wd are able to get through. I will try to take some more pictures, maybe one down at the big bridge when I can get through. That would be really thundering right now!

A general overview of the corner.

The water thundering into our back paddock and then into the neighbours.

Looking up north in the opposite direction. The water in this picture is only about shin height.

A closeup of the water flooding over the enbankment.