Crikey it’s wet

[willedoo]

12 minutes ago, onetrack said:

It'll be good for the possums when they fly from tree to tree.

No more possum stories around the fire about how Grandpa Possum met a dreadful, blazing end, when he collided with some unseen, bare wires on his last flight.

Never thought of that and I have some sugar gliders on the place. They often take up residence in the air gap in the roof's ridge cap. They move around a bit though. I don't know if they're like the brush tail possums who are always having territorial barneys and often pinch each other's homes.

[old man emu]

Be careful of what you wish for:

 

About 7:00 pm last night:

 

 

When it arrived the rain was torrential. The water would have to be 50 mm deep here. The rain was falling so heavily that I just about had to give up trying to hear the sound on videos I was watching. Luckily my drinking water tanks had filled from light rain earlier in the day. I was able to open the diverter so that the heavy rain off the roof could drain away.

Around 8:00 pm, as the rain moved towards the east, the light of the setting sun on the falling rain turned the whole sky a light tan colour. 

[willedoo]

4 hours ago, old man emu said:

Be careful of what you wish for:

 

About 7:00 pm last night:

ome, what's your soil type there? Just wondering how boggy it gets.

[old man emu]

30 minutes ago, willedoo said:

what's your soil type there

Since I don't grow stuff and haven't lived here long enough to learn about the soil type, I can't tell you for certain. To answer your question, I went out and dug up a sample of topsoil. It was still damp from the storm the day before. It had a gritty feel and when I squeezed it, the sample held together. I formed the opinion (based on what I learned in Soil Science lectures long, long ago) that this indicated the soil was sandy loam.  Referring to a For Sale ad for a property about 6.5 kms from my place, it said that the soil types are red loam to sandy loam in all paddocks.

 

My hovel is on a slope with the ground falling from the highway to the creek:

I took my sample from ground that has never been cultivated. Therefore, it is likely to have a good amount of decayed plant material in it. This photo shows the end of my driveway where the sand from the exposed surface has been eroded from up the slope and deposited where the water slowed because of the thicker "lawn" grass down slope from the house.

 

I would say that most of the water you can see in the earlier photo drained away, towards the creek. The storm ended about 2015 and by 2200 the water had gone and the ground was firm enough to walk on.

[willedoo]

I guess one advantage with sandy soil is that it doesn't get as sticky as black soil or that red stuff.

[facthunter]

Work it in your hand moist and you will know if there's much clay in it. The black soils are like grease when it's wet and is east near  Wee Waa, Burren Junction and the Pilliga.   A bit of compost and charcoal and you'd grow anything well. Check the Ph and add diatomaceous LIME if it's acid, for your home garden.    Nev

[old man emu]

The place has been used as a home for a few horses for years. One year a grain crop was put into one of the horse paddocks and it was one of the best crops in the district. It's been fallow for years since. and only three horses on it, plus half a dozen roos.

[red750]

In Melbourne's rain yesterday, a woman took a Uber and the driver went via the Dudley St underpass in West Melbourne and got stuck in floodwater. She had to sit on the roof till rescued.

[facthunter]

It might have compacted a bit OME.  Are there any worms?  You'll only  get them where it stays moist.  Nev

[spacesailor]

I visited a farm ! . That had run horses.  Nothing but weeds grew there .they said the horse eats grasses  & seeds , but ,

Doesn't digest those seeds , they grow again after going through the horse .

What do you do with a paddock of weed , one person used a " flame thrower " to burn the weeds every year for at least three years. In Toongabbie one house-owner paid big money to have his garden sieved , to get rid of palm tree pips/stones .as they made his dogs sick .

spacesailor

[willedoo]

3 minutes ago, spacesailor said:

I visited a farm ! . That had run horses.  Nothing but weeds grew there .they said the horse eats grasses  & seeds , but ,

Doesn't digest those seeds , they grow again after going through the horse .

What do you do with a paddock of weed , one person used a " flame thrower " to burn the weeds every year for at least three years. In Toongabbie one house-owner paid big money to have his garden sieved , to get rid of palm tree pips/stones .as they made his dogs sick .

spacesailor

The old saying with weeds is one year of seeding equals seven years of weeding. Oats is one of the only grain seeds animals can digest properly in it's whole, non cracked form. Most others have to be cracked to digest properly. Undigested seed has it's own ready made fertiliser in the horse/cow/sheep poo to give it a good head start.

[spacesailor]

Poor farmer ! .

I suspect it was rented for horse agisment .

One person hires the paddocks,  then charges other people to leave their horses there .

We have visited a few to check on live stock. & sometimes 

Have to call in professionals to fix things up.

Like a horse with ' round hoofs ' . Never been shod or trimmed for many years .

Out of sight , then out of mind .  ( forgotten about ).

S E S  Get a lot of weird jobs .

spacesailor

 

[red750]

re my previous post. This photo taken from the news shows the woman on the car. I'd say the water had receded a bit since it stopped the car.

 

[spacesailor]

Did she get her feet wet,  getting out of that car & up onto it's roof .

AND did the ' uber ' driver ' swim away , leaving her " high & dry .

spacesailor

[kgwilson]

Another driver ignoring the emergency services call "If its flooded forget it". The number of people who still think they can get through, even with all the publicity and evidence of vehicles swept away drownings and dangerous rescues astounds me.

[red750]

Get-there-itis.

[onetrack]

Back about the early 1980's, when the brother and I lived in the W.A. Southern wheatbelt, we considered selling a surplus dozer outright, as it was under-utilised.

We contacted a used equipment dealer in Perth, and he agreed to come up and check it out, and make an offer on it.

It turned out this bloke was the most obnoxious, arrogant ar**hole you could possibly find on the planet. So far up himself, it's a wonder he could see to get around.

 

He rolled up with a compatriot in an almost-new Mercedes 380SE - a V8, and a very expensive piece of motoring in its day. It was late July when he rolled up, and we'd had about 15-20mm of rain overnight.

It had been a reasonably wet Winter, and the ground was saturated and a lot of the smaller creeks were flowing again, after this overnight rain.

 

We set off with him and his mate in the Merc, the brother and I sitting in the rear of the car, out to where the dozer was located, on a clients farm about 20 kms S of the town.

We got out of town about 8 kms and had to take a (good) unsealed gravel road to reach the farm. After a few more kms, we came to a small floodway where the creek was running across the road.

 

The arrogant ar**hole stopped, and said to us, "Is this too deep to drive through?" I was very familiar with the area, and I knew the creek was only about 500-600mm deep.

I said to him, "I'd drive my Holden ute through that creek, no worries". So he slipped the Merc into gear and proceeded slowly into the steadily-flowing creek. 

The water came about 250mm above the door sills as we waded in, with the Merc running at maybe 1800RPM in low gear.

 

Next thing, there's an almighty great BANG! - and the Merc stopped dead in her tracks!!

 

As we stopped, water started flowing into the back footwells through the door seals - with the doors shut!! So much for the great Mercedes engineering!!

So, as were getting very wet anyway, the brother and I opened the back doors and jumped out - into absolutely freezing creek water!

The other pair baled out too, and the four of us pushed the dead Merc out of the creek, and up onto dry road.

 

The Merc owner opened the bonnet and took the top off the huge aircleaner that sat on top of the V8 motor. It was full of water!! So, we then checked the intake pipe to the air cleaner - and discovered it ran from the top of the engine, along the front of the inner guard, around the front of the radiator - and it then ended up, sucking air from under the front bumper!! No wonder it sucked in a gutful of water!!

 

What was worse, the water had gone into this fancy, convoluted-shaped intake manifold (that had more curves in it than the Kardashians) - and every curved pocket in that manifold held another litre of water!!

We took the spark plugs out, cranked all the water out, replaced the spark plugs - it would fire up for 2-3 seconds, then stop again, as it sucked more water out of the manifold pockets!!

 

We finally got all the water out of it, and got it running - but it was running with this terrible, CLACK, CLACK, CLACK, CLACK, sound - it had broken rings, for sure.

The Merc owner was SO pissed off! We proceeded to the dozer steadily, he checked it out - but we couldn't agree on a mutually satisfactory selling price, so we went home again!

 

On the way home, I said, "There's a good Ford mechanic/dealer in town, if you want him to look at your engine, and give you an opinion on whether its safe to drive back to Perth?"

The arrogant ar**hole snorted, "I'm not letting any half-ar**ed, deadbeat Ford mechanic look at my Merc!" 

"Please yourself, then", I replied. He comes back with, "I always do".

 

So we go back home and Mr Merc owner shot through back to Perth (about 285kms), and I never heard a thing about whether he got back in one piece, or had to get towed, or what it all cost him.

But really, I didn't care in the least, he could afford any amount of Mercedes repairs, and I'm sure he probably unloaded the car promptly onto some "wood duck" that he found - he was that type of operator.

[Jerry_Atrick]

My father was a bit if a crazy driver. This is hearsay as I was too young to remember, but he had an EK Holden. This would have been probably '67 but driving back from the annual Brisbane pilgrimage to spend Chrissie with the relations, apparently the Maribybong broke  its banks and flooded a bridge we needed to cross to get home. The bridge was closed, but as my father had his own business, nothing was going to stop him getting home to get us into bed so he could go to work the next day.

 

The police didn't want to let him go through, but he had this way of persevering inn the most annoying way, so the police said, "right mate.. off ya go.. but if you get stuck, we're not coming to get you." Well, off he went and apparently my mother was almost panic stricken  - water was entering the car and she could feel the car wanting to be carried away with the current.

 

He made it, though...

 

I have no recollection of course.. I was probably asleep.. So it is hearsay from my mother.

[nomadpete]

The danger comes from flowing water - a stalled car in still water doesn't kill anybody as long as it hasn't totally submerged.

I have been in a Holden commodore at night, crossing a flowing flooded bit of Bruce Hwy. I had driven along this stretch an hour previously, and figured that if it was dry then, the water couldn't have come up much in that short time. So I followed a semi through, hoping to use the shallow bit close behind him. But he didn't  know I was there, and stopped halfway across to talk to another semi driver coming toward us. The water was rocking the car alarmingly, and the headlights were shining through solid brown water. For a moment I was worried - once stationary, water was sure to flood the engine bay and stall the motor. But luckily the truckie had only paused and we got moving again. It was a very close call. Luckily the waggon was quite heavily loaded.

 

Years later we nearly floated a heavily loaded Toyota troopy away in a fast flowing creek, but that is a different story.

 

There is a lot of force behind even relatively slow moving water!

[old man emu]

3 minutes ago, nomadpete said:

There is a lot of force behind even relatively slow moving water!

Bit of science here.

While in layman's terms, the feeling we have when moving water collides with our body, which we call the "force" of the water is actually a transfer of Momentum from the water to our body.

 

 

[nomadpete]

1 minute ago, old man emu said:

Bit of science here.

While in layman's terms, the feeling we have when moving water collides with our body, which we call the "force" of the water is actually a transfer of Momentum from the water to our body.

 

 

Now you are confuddling my story with facts.

[old man emu]

5 minutes ago, nomadpete said:

Now you are confuddling my story with facts.

Sorry. You think you've got problems. It's too early in the morning for me to think of a clear way to  describe the link between Force and Momentum. 

 

Force = mass x acceleration, written as F = ma

Momentum = mass x velocity, written as M = mv

Acceleration  = rate of change of velocity, written as a = (vfinal - vinitial)/t

[kgwilson]

200mm and a small car will begin to float and loose traction, 300mm and most cars & SUVs will do the same. If there is a bit of a flow even though it doesn't look bad the vehicles will get carried away and once off the road and in to the river bed or flow and you are at the mercy of nature. I've been involved in a number of rescues with SES and the excuses are always the same. It didn't look too bad or I didn't think it was that deep, the current didn't look that strong etc. Any good 4WDer will get out and walk in to the flow to check it out. You can't see what is underneath especially when the water is dirty.

[onetrack]

The brother had a HJ61 (turbo diesel) Landcruiser in the early 1980's, and after a heavy rain overnight during the Winter of 1982, we were travelling along a minor sealed road in the Western part of the W.A. wheatbelt, the Wandering-Narrogin Road, with the brother driving.

We came across a creek running a "banker" over a timber bridge that had wooden post railings along each side of the bridge. The water was flowing pretty fast, and I reckoned it was around 850-900mm deep, coming from our left, travelling to the right. 

I would've been reluctant to go through it, and I would've turned around and found another route. But the brother, ever up for a challenge, just ploughed through it. 

I was sitting in the passenger seat watching the floodwater nearly level with the bottom of my passenger door window! But amazingly, the Landcruiser just chugged through it, and never missed a beat, and we didn't even feel any "floatiness". I'm guessing because we kept up a bit of speed and because the creek wasn't all that wide, we didn't get enough time in the water to start floating!

[red750]

I'm with you onetrack, I'm the world's biggest chicken.