Aftermath of flooding along the Murrumbidgee River, Hay, NSW
Once again we are going to have to change our travel plans because of the weather (read rain and more rain). We had planned to travel around the border area between New South Wales and Victoria, camping along the Murrumbidgee and Murray Rivers. That won’t be possible. Flooding here in December has barely receded, and the ground around the rivers is saturated. As we drove here from Wagga Wagga this morning all along the way the fields and ditches were still full of standing water. It was ironic to see huge irrigation sprayers and their booms standing in water.
The ground itself is very flat. In many ways it reminds one of the country in Southern Saskatchewan around Regina. There are a few more trees, but we drove on a very straight flat road for much of today. There weren’t many cattle or sheep either. At first as we left the area near Wagga Wagga we saw some very large paddocks of sheep, but later on we saw none. We did see the a big John Deere combine though.
We arrived in Hay in the early afternoon and got a few vegetables. I spoke to the service station attendant and he said it had rained about 60 cm on Monday, and they expected 30 to 40 mm today. He said that unless they got over 100 mm today they shouldn’t have any flooding. Then we registered at the Big 4 campsite here. We were the first people in today, though now there are quite a few more. The campsite is right beside the Murrumbidgee River which is not flooding now. The campground doesn’t look as if it flooded, but it must have been close. It doesn’t look like the water crossed the street here, but another metre higher and it would have. All the bank of the river is very muddy and there are large trees along the banks that have been uprooted and are about to fall into the water.
It is raining again tonight, and has been since we arrived. We are very tired of the rain and so have decided to go inland into the desert around Alice Springs. It will have to be a fairly quick trip as we must be back in Melbourne by February 7 to catch the ferry to Tasmania. It will probably be very hot, but we’re used to dry hot weather in Saskatchewan summers, so we’ll probably be fine.