“Beep, Beep……!” trailed off the answering service on my home phone at 1.30 am on Saturday 2 May. Awaking from a deep sleep I thought, “Could this be telemarketer on steroids?”
My brain slowly started to waken and I started to worry. Was it my grown up son ringing to say that a grandchild was in hospital on death’s door or maybe my grown up daughter’s boyfriend ringing from Spain with similar bad news. There, the phone rang again. It wasn’t a hoax. I told myself to get up and answer it. I arrived at the phone in time to hear Narina’s voice leaving a message to come to the canoe club for evacuation. I checked my mobile and found Martin had tried to ring me too. Gee this was serious but at least my children and grandchildren were ok.
I checked the warnings on the “bom” site on the internet. Earlier the previous afternoon we had partially packed up the canoe club and planned to return about 7am Saturday and fully pack up. We would wait for when the bureau of meteorology could make a firm prediction for the expected flood height. When I had gone to bed the only prediction was for the height to exceed 4.2 metres by 3am. However the heavens had opened up overnight and at 1.30 am the flood height was being revised to a catastrophic 9 metres later that day. I had heard stories of old of a few hardy volunteers packing up the canoe club in the wee hours. Now it was happening for real again and I was involved.
It was still raining heavily. I dressed in old clothes, took a raincoat and torch and drove down to the club. I found the water level already just covering sections of the concrete floor and Martin and Phillip securing boats to trailer. Narina was preparing to move all the club odds and ends to the third floor up the stairs. Barbara soon arrived looking as bleary eyed as I must look.
Apparently Martin couldn’t sleep and had made a middle of the night journey to check on the clubhouse and must have seen the rising water and raised the alarm. Steadily we worked to remove all the morning tea stuff, paddles, outboard motor, lawn mowers etc to the third floor while Phil and Martin continued with the trailers. Water seemed to bubble out from the concrete as the levels slowly rose.
Once all the club equipment was secured we turned our attention to the several private boats that were still in the clubhouse. Some of the boat owners had made arrangements with Phillip to remove their boats. However quite a few had done nothing to remove their boats. A few hasty 2.30 am phone calls were made. Only John Hennings could be raised to come and get his boat. It left us with a dilemma. It is the boat owner’s responsibility to remove their own boat. However many may have been planning to come in the morning as originally advised. If we left the sensitive fibreglass kayaks till the morning there would be no access and the boats would be damaged. After much soul searching private boats were removed on car top to Barbara’s, Geoff Stuart’s and my home. So please when you get the email to evacuate, arrive promptly to remove your own boat and don’t place the few who might be performing a full evacuation to agonise over what to do. Even if you not aware of the email you probably have a fair idea when it is going to flood. Keep an eye on the warnings at www.bom.gov.au/nsw/ .
As the waters rose above the gum boot, we sank the Canadian canoes. They are ok left on the floor filled with water. We turned off the electricity and left by 4 am. It had stopped raining already. The flood height did not reach the earlier prediction of 9 metres. However it did reach 7.4 metres by 6 pm which is not much under roof level of the ground floor.
What an adventure!
