Everything is saturated in Tasmania’s Derwent Valley.
The sodden ground is scattered with debris. Large trees and branches have been moved upriver. It is eerily quiet.
The Derwent Valley mayor, Michelle Dracoulis, says the stillness makes it seem “as though nothing’s happening the last couple of days” except, of course, for “the damage” all around.
Record flooding has swamped Tasmania, inundating roads and properties, resulting in many residents of towns surrounding the Derwent River near Meadowbank and Macquarie Plains evacuating on Monday morning.
Crews and police have been door-knocking in the area since then and two evacuation centres remain open for displaced residents on Wednesday.
“We are probably all a bit shocked,” local Sarah Okenyo says. “It hasn’t happened that badly for a while and I probably didn’t think it was going to get as bad as it did.”
It started with wild winds and rain, Okenyo says. Then the banks of the Derwent River broke.
“Anything low-lying has totally been flooded, and the roads in and out of the town in certain directions.”
Okenyo lives on a mountain in the valley. From her home, she saw the water level rise “but I didn’t expect it to get up over the road”.
She is part of the Derwent Valley concert band. They use the memorial hall in the centre of town to rehearse. But it has now been converted into an evacuation centre for people who live close to the river.
“We are glad that it can help, so that people who can’t get home or their home is flooded can have somewhere to stay that is warm and dry,” Okenyo says.
In Bushy Park, Tom Parry watched a quarter of the farm he manages for Hop Products Australia submerge under water.
The Styx River runs through the 265 hectare farm, where it joins the Derwent. The Derwent also borders the property – making it prone to floods.
“This is the biggest flood I’ve seen come through,” Parry says. “This flood is probably the biggest flood we have had since the Meadowbank dam was built.”
The water level rose at a frightening pace, he says.
“We had a little bit of infrastructure damage. The irrigation by the pump sheds, a bit of erosion around the riverbanks of the hop fields that border the river.”
The property’s low-lying paddocks were inundated, washing out the strings that hop plants grow up.
“It certainly can make you pretty nervous about the power of the water and the damage it can do.”
With roads closed, Parry was unable to get around the farm and inspect the damage.
“I was quite nervous for a couple of days,” he says. “There is quite a lot of debris, particularly scattered through the farm. Tree branches are going to take a fair bit of cleaning up.”
Dracoulis says: “Overwhelmingly, at the moment, communities [are] looking out for each other.”
She hails the volunteer efforts to clean roads and transport food to people isolated and affected by power outages.
“We live in a river area, we do get flooding, but this has been an extreme event.
“We’ve come out the other end now with just a bit of a clean-up on our hands.”
