Rain & bridges

I would have liked to get some pics of how the rain affected the area, but that's the problem with rain, you don't want to go out in it to take pics! Ropes Creek rose quite a lot. I think it's highest was about 8 feet under the bridge on Forrester. If it hadn't stopped raining it could easily have flooded again. I think it's been over 10 years since it flooded last. When it does go the bridges on both Forrester and Debrincat go under about the same time, but now the bridge is up at Ropes Crossing we should be able to get in and out of the burb easier - it's higher than the other two. The planners did plan for once! We had to go all the way to Mr Druitt to get over the creek last time.

Dragonfly

This pic wasn't straight forward either. I was surrounded by dragonflies the whole time I was down by the creek, but they move too fast. No way I was getting a pic. Then when I was walking away I saw a flash of redfly pst me and land on the ground about 3 metres away. I couldn't see it on the ground but I knew it hadn't moved so I just stood still, zoomed my camera as far as it would go, pointed where I knew it stopped and snapped on auto. It was only when I got the pic onto the computer that I saw the dragon fly. Cropped the pic, sharpened (even on auto the focus wasn't very good at all), and here for your enjoyment is one of the many draganflies from Ropes Creek.


I've never seen them with their wings forward like that. Because I couldn't actually see it I don't know if it was moving it's wings and that's where the camera caught it, or if it was simply sitting with it's wings down.

ps, Hello Cathi!

The ugly side

So much for idyllic! This must be the social comment part. Poor old creek. But even though it's really quite ugly, it's also functional. This is the footbridge over Ropes Creek! Washed away every time the creek floods and rebuilt out of shopping trolleys and other refuse when the water goes down again. In the twelve or so years I've been here there's always been at least one shopping trolley incorporated into the bridge. Also concrete pipes, pieces of carpet, corrugated tin, tree trunks, milk crates, mattress springs, car tires ....

Flooding

There's been so much rain that various streams have flooded around the area. Ropes creek hasn't yet. It's up quite a lot, but not close enough to flooding. I have seen it flood, a couple of times a few years ago, and the worst was when the whole reserve was flooded. It filled up to the bottom of the embankment along Ellsworth Drive. Both bridges, the one on Forester and the one on Debrincat were covered and there was no way from Tregear into St Marys. We had to go round via Mt Druitt or up to Penrith. Luckily the buses come and go from Mt Druitt so we could still get around without much trouble.

On the way home from the station today we drove around to have a look at flooded South Creek at St Marys and found all the fuss on Werrington Road with the possibility of missing children. There were helicopters everywhere and a motor boat on an area that is usually dry, running beside the road on the north side of Dunheved Road. Fire engines everywhere and heaps of onlookers. The whole of South Creek has turned into a lake.

Of course none of that was in Tregear ... hmm. In Tregear there was a dirt bike in the reserve, although under these weather conditions we might have to call it a mud bike...