Rain’s a pain

By Danielle Galvin
A TYNONG mum has thanked the Cardinia Shire Council road crew who helped clean the mud and silt from her garage and front lawn after flash flooding last Thursday night.
It was the third time Karen Damen’s View Street property had flooded in five years.
“It was pretty messy,” she said.
“We rang the council and they said they don’t come out to private properties but the road crew came and had a look.”
The water lapped at the front door of Ms Damen’s home on the weekend as more rain pelted down, but she said towels blocked the water from coming inside.
It was March two years ago when the water nearly gushed through her front door.
“It was my daughter’s birthday, that’s why I remember the date. The storm was terrible,” she said.
“Then the second time was this time last year when we had the floods.”
Around the corner it was a similar story for Rosa Wedmore and her retired husband.
“We live on 111 acres and it’s still very wet from last year,” Ms Wedmore said.
They have lived on their Nine Mile Road property for seven years.
“It’s very flat, so the drainage is very bad,” she said.
When the rain stopped, Ms Wedmore headed outside to the Tynong Railway Station and across her property to relay the damage from the localised storm.
“The water was literally gushing across the railway tracks,” she said.
The rain and hail lasted for two and a half hours. In that time, the back yard of Ms Wedmore’s property looked more like a river than a lawn. She estimates that they received about 183 ml of rain.
“It was torrential rain, I wasn’t game to have a look. When the rain passed I went outside,” she said.
Since last year’s flooding in the shire, Ms Wedmore’s property hasn’t managed to dry out.
“There are parts of the property that we can’t get to still. We can’t get there on the tractor and we have to dodge certain parts because it’s still wet from last year,” she said.
This year she says it was the wind that was particularly frightening.
“We had a little bit of hail but the wind was really strong. We have a couple of big trees in our yard and they were bending towards the east,” she said.
“Then it came back and it was blowing to the west.”
After ringing her son in Pakenham, Ms Wedmore says she realised how localised the storm was.
“He said he hadn’t even had a drop of rain,” she said. “That’s what happens when you live in the swamp.”