General News
24 October, 2022
24 hours of Bridgey spirit
By CHRIS EARLELEVEN years and nine months on, Bridgewater woke Friday morning to news that a speeding torrent now near proportions to the heartbreaking 2011 flood was gushing down the Loddon River. The one load of sand dropped in town the previous...
By CHRIS EARL
ELEVEN years and nine months on, Bridgewater woke Friday morning to news that a speeding torrent now near proportions to the heartbreaking 2011 flood was gushing down the Loddon River.
The one load of sand dropped in town the previous day had allowed residents in some lower areas of town and around the district to take precautions, drawing on their experiences of January 14 2011 to plan and sandbag homes and property.
The change of flood warning from moderate to major suddenly saw those preparations at high-octane levels. A peak just centimetres below the 2011 level was being predicted for October 14 2022.
Popular town businesses the Bridgewater Hotel and Bridgewater Bakehouse are closest to the normally idyllic river. Claire Harrison put out the call for the town to help hotel owners Virginia Hyland and Greg McKinley, answered by an army of volunteers stripping the hotel of stock and equipment, removing even carpet tiles, loaded onto trucks and utes for a convoy to the town’s football ground.
Across the road at the bakehouse, friends and excess volunteers from the hotel were assisting owners Pat and Theresa O’Toole with the same task and joining the same convoy. The O’Tooles were on the cusp of opening their now-Australian recognised bakery when the Loddon burst its banks in 2011, they knew from experience what to do this wet October.
Back at the hotel, now empty and locked, Virginia stood under the verandah watching waters spread towards the front door. “When I see the first water go in, I’ll leave,” she said.
The town army of volunteers had moved up to the sandbagging point beside Bridgewater Nursery where locals had also been joined by crews from Inglewood Fire Brigade and the Parks Victoria team based in that town over the bridge spanning the Loddon, Fosterville Gold Mine until called back in to help around Bendigo.
Briefly Marong State Emergency Service unit was also on the sandbag line, I say briefly because its members were being called away to road rescues as some motorists thought they knew better than road closed signs and the obvious rising levels over roads.
Over the bridge, where home blocks fall sharply to the river, residents were putting furniture out on the footpath. Glenn Catto had the previous day moved vintage tractors stored at sister Barb’s home to higher ground.
Andrew Ferguson, a neighbour nearby with an already elevated chook house, put in a levee of sandbags and plastic virtually to the level later reached that would have allowed his chickens to “dip their toes” in the water.
“I was here in 2011 and knew what I had to do,” he said on Saturday morning. “It just kept coming and we were pumpinging out quickly as we could.”
“Plastic was bulging in places and I just kept putting more sandbags there,” said Andrew who this time won the overnight battle.
Back on the town side of the Loddon, still working frantically on Friday, the town’s fire brigade captain Tim Ferguson was calmly co-ordinating the distribution of sandbags. A small fleet of tractors was dropping off pallets at every business and home in the block heading towards Bendigo as water furtively, or would that be ominously, crept across the Calder Highway.
Trucks and crews that arrived at dawn to assist with the effort at the hotel and bakery, were now seconded to negotiate rising waters with distribution of sandbags. More sand kept arriving, people of all ages on the shovel, Tim Ferguson making the call that a delivery of sand also be sent to the opposite side of the river.
Focus was interspersed with levity and reflection. Main Street resident Julie Lythgo had sandbagged her old shop home on the corner, saying: “We got caught short in 2011 … got notified to evacuate three days later.”
By mid-afternoon Friday, local policeman Leading Senior Constable Mick Balazs had closed the road. Bridgewater now split by the raging river, the bridge closed to all but pedestrians on the other side.
The bridge itself had featured in the unfolding drama of the day when earlier, the ski jump ramp snapped loose from its mooring near the caravan park, and was sent hurtling with an almighty thud into the 1958 river crossing. Receding water on Saturday revealed one half wrapped around a bridge pylon, the other encasing part of the railway bridge pylon several hundred metres further downstream.
The caravan park, too, was well underwater, Wendy and Tim James and Rhonda and Darren Reilley’s sandbagging helping save the main reception building.
When the bridge closed, it was confirmation that for this Friday night I would be a resident of Bridgewater – all roads out of town were now blocked.
While Loddon Shire had a relief centre in the town’s 99-year-old memorial hall, many locals were at the recreation reserve, contemplating the rise of the river and drawing strength from being with friends, sausages cooked on the football club barbecue or tucking into a pie shifted from the bakery hours earlier.
They were far from dejected and pitched in to carry supplies flown in by two helicopters around 6pm, arrival tracked with flight apps on mobile phone.
As dusk approached, there was an eerie quiet over Main Street, the time Tim Ferguson would later be told the flood peak of October 14 2022 was 8.3 metres at about 7.30pm, below the predicted high of nine metres and a full metre under 2011.
Come dawn Saturday, Tim was back on Main Street putting his fleet of tractors and trucks back into service, the river level was dropping and water quickly receding with the community crew removing sandbags, starting the cleanup, preparing the hotel, post office and bakery and other businesses to eventually re-open.
Steve Sperling, owner of the old Globe Hotel right near the bridge, said: “The water was a foot lower this time. She’s still standing … that’s the best part.”
Andrew and Jenny Ritchie moved into their new home next to the Bridgewater Hotel in January 2021, built to meet local flood standards – high foundations put the floor 1.3 metres up, the water on Friday reached 600mm.
“We put everything up, turned the power off and went and stayed without our daughter,” they said.
Around the corner at the bowls club, mud caking greens and clubhouse carpets was being hosed off by familiar faces – the task roster simply updated for people like Laura and Wayne Naughton who spent the previous day distributing sandbags.
What about the sandbags removed from around the clubhouse that was restored after the 2011 floods, members asked.
Leave them here, had been the call of Tim Ferguson. With the forecast of more late spring and summer rain, and now experiences 11 years and nine months apart, they may be needed again.