A storm was brewing and it didn't
disappoint. Rain all day continued into the night and we were about
to go to bed about 10pm. Then we noticed some wet spots appearing on
the ceiling of the cabin. Lisa lay on the bed and sure enough. Drip –
a drop landed on her. The rain got heavier. More wet spots appeared.
This was nothing new, a couple of years ago we had record rain and
the roof leaked a bit. The strong wind had lifted the tin a little.
Old nails. I banged it back down after that. Looks like the wind had
lifted it again. Problem was this time it was leaking over the bed –
in two places. We knew we couldn't sleep there. We checked out the
other cabin – same deal. We had no choice but to evacuate. We have
a town house in Wivenhoe about 40min away. Some of the leaks were
getting pretty near some of our books and papers, so we hastily
packed the car.
About 10.45pm we were ready to leave.
The rain was pelting down and we switched off the power just in case.
We made a dash for the 4wd. The garden path had turned into a small
river and we waded upstream like salmon. Luckily the car started (we
just had it fixed) but we had both got soaked – even with the
pretty good wet weather gear we had. Into the wild night we went.
We didn't get more than 200m before we
encountered our first bit of flooding, then we splashed through about
100m of quite deep water just past Matt's dairy and Keith's place.
Visibility was about 10m at most through the squalls and heavy sheet
rain and the fog. Fog and rain at the same time – nice – must be
the Tarkine.
We got just past Lapoinya and
approached the bridge. “Slow down”, I said, “Just make sure the
bridge is still there”. My prior experience with Tasmania
engineering was still a fresh memory (I walked on the platform at Dip
falls – a few months later it fell off the cliff face and they had
to replace it). The bridge was there but it was just as well we
couldn't see the raging torrent below us. If we could have I doubt we
would have crossed. This was about 11pm. This morning the bridge was
no longer there.
We went and had a look today after we
came back (along with half the residents of the area). We talked to
another local who said that an ambulance had been called around
12.45am and screeched to a halt before the gap, narrowly missing
tragedy. So somewhere between 11pm and 12.45am the bridge had fallen.
We realized we were the last people to cross the old Lapoinya bridge.
We now know how lucky we were.
