Well we roamed far and wide over the
Vic high country over christmas and
as a general comment I found the whole scene pleasant and the tracks basically dry and while not always easy the tracks were more of an interesing drive rather than difficult.
Come New years eve, and while
Melbourne was a wash out, we camped in the best spot at
Talbotville and had a mild near perfect evening, which would have beed almost dull if not for a few imprompt fireworks.
However , while we were lazing about , massive rains and local flooding were occurring in parts of Victoria.
One area badly hit was
Alexandra and our own bush block nearby.
Thats fine , we have had rain before I think , but what a shock when we rolled up a few days later.
A few weeks ago we posted about a storm which caused a huge amount of trees to be smashed and splinted all over the
places closing most tracks, we thought that was bad.
However over time trees can be removed generally and tracks re-opened but the water damage and erosion this rain caused this time is the most I have ever seen, and short of getting in an expensive bulldozer I really have little idea about what can be done !
Two photo's here show how water has flooded down a gentle slope had just ripped through the centre of a major connecting track.
The erosion was caused in a single overnight downpour and has moved hundreds of tons of dirt and rocks and created ruts more than a meter deep and wide essentially destroying the track.
Its easy to view a picture and think , yep thats a big rut , but when you sit back and try to imagine what amount of water flow could have done this in a single hit its very concerning.
Some of the rocks moved and washed over 100 meters were some 50kg each and probably had the potential to seriously injure anyone caught there that evening.
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