Well, the heavens have opened again – nothing too dramatic (my rain gauge shows 29 mil) but on top of the recent downpour, our bridges are over again.

Lets start at the top and work our way down…

The 4th bridge is over

and here is a video of it flowing

(I always think that still photos of the 4th bridge just don’t convey the impact)

We slackly didn’t stop at the Green Bridge as it hadn’t been over and no work has been done on it. (I’m driving around that nasty raised ridge just after the west end)

And here’s the low bridge.

The low bridge at Kirk Lane

We’re supposed to be going over this bridge this morning in our extremely low slung classic 1964 Studebaker Cruiser which we have just sold, but its just so not happening! Can’t deliver a sodden vehicle (At 2 tonnes I don’t think it would get washed off, and the air intake is nice and high, but the car body itself sits very low. Oh dear!)

Here’s some video:

The low bridge half a metre under

and a 4wd crossed the creek while we watched.

A 4wd crossing the Low Bridge at Kirk Lane

We would cross this with a good reason, but 50cm is about the limit. As the rain has now stopped the creek will drop quickly and it will be easily passable by 4WD quite soon.

And here is a shot of our neighbour’s bridge. Because. (Honestly, I’m not intensely jealous of it – any rumours you hear to the contrary are just untrue! ) See how the fast flowing water is just rolling over their old low bridge? Very cool!

and here’s the creek height – you can see when all the rain reached the creek…

Creek height graph. The red line shows the normal creek height
(click through to see what the creek is doing now)

Yesterday was relatively dry – we had visitors arrive and they had no problem coming in in their teeny tiny car because the low bridge was actually dry. Huzzah!
But the day dawned wet and an early inspection of the bridge showed water over it, and a look at the radar showed lots and lots of rain coming, with which the radio forecasts agreed, so we made the decision to keep the kids home from school (I live in fear of them being on one side of the bridge and me on the other, sadly waving at each other. I’m sure its a metaphor for the great disasters that can befall families…)
And it was the wrong call – they could have gotten home this afternoon as it really only drizzled all day. Ah, well – hindsight 20/20; not so good the other direction…
Not that I know how they would have got there – the school bus was apparently kept out by the water on the bridge.

But, on with the fun photos! These are from 8:30 this morning…

Here is the low bridge - I passed it myself in a sedan for a quick trip at Noon

A stylish shot, the low bridge really was passable...

The view up the creek - she's wild and woolly! (Near the top swimming hole)

And our neighbours beautiful bridge - see, the water really is down!

And our report wouldn’t be complete without a screen dump of the creek height graph:

See those two little spikes today that had me worried that something bigger was coming? Didn’t even hit 2 metres. I’m so sick of this weather…. The tanks are full! You can stop now!

(click the image to see what the creek is doing right now…)

Well, it rained all night and we are still here (wasn’t worried there – off hand, I don’t think there are any houses in Cedar Creek in danger of flooding) yet still flooded in. But we have photos of Upper Cedar Creek floodways (we are unable to get to Lower Cedar Creek unless someone would like to loan us a helicopter!)

Firstly, for the most excitement, here is the green bridge:

Covered in silt, with bits of the approaches missing and, 100 m down the creek, the 'temporary' edging that the council has left in place for the last year

I *think* the concrete siding has held up, but it will need to be inspected - the railings are well damaged, again.

The surface is covered in silt, so that will need scraping back (hello Moreton Bay Council! Can you hear me?)

Once again, where the tar reaches the concrete has taken major damage - please be very careful if you need to come into Cedar Creek!

The green bridge approach, damaged

At first inspection, it seems that the damage is all to the lower side of the bridge - the upper side looks ok. No telling what has washed out underneath, of course.

and now for the low bridge. These photos are taken at 9am this morning

at 40cm under, the low bridge is passable by 4wd and bigger at the moment

The low bridge is flowing well - flowing over the bridge, that is

And here is our creek height graph, from the wonderful BOM:

As you can see, the creek peaked at over 4 metres. I think our new rule of thumb is over 4 meters means damage to the Green Bridge surface...
Click the image to see the current graph

And here is our neighbours bridge again, just because it is so cool. As you can see, the creek is still roaring its way down its bed

The neighbours bridge is clear

Well, the creek has dropped substantially – its now down to the level it was this morning and is ’4wd passable’ (I try not to scream while grabbing the handgrip when we do that! The driver finds it distracting…)

Here’s some photos…

The 4th bridge was still under - this looks like nothing, but there was still a car on the other side waiting to be able to cross

Our neighbours bridge is now down a lot

The Green bridge is uncovered, but covered in silt and needs attention

The low bridge is still well under - not passable by sedan, which is what the nice police officer was doubtless enforcing

A 4WD Ute makes it across the bridge, no problem

Our neighbour's Landcruiser Defender makes it home - they were very glad to get home after being stuck out all day

The green bridge is now under. The temporary edging that council has left in place for the last 12 months is floating gently down the creek. Ooops!

Dave popped down and took this and said it was rising as he stood there…

And here are some photos…

The top bridge is yet further under water

The Green Bridge backing up, as usual

The neighbour's bridge, now much higher!

The creek seems to have peaked, but more rain will send it straight back up...

Well, it rained and rained and rained last night – its 7am and it looks like there is over 50 ml in the gauge.

Obviously the creek is up – we’ve been down and checked the bridges and even if the school bus can cross it, I don’t want my kids on it trying to go back…

Here’s the low bridge:

Thats the bridge that is hardest to cross. We saw a couple of 4wd utes cross it, but we saw no need to even try it.

The green bridge isn’t over – yet, but its quite high:

and the bridge above us is just awash! This is what the low bridge will be like in an hour or so. This really doesn’t capture how it is roaring over the bridge – photos never do seem to capture it until its really ridiculous. The reverse of the camera adding a kilo?

Our neighbour who built the fancy bridge into his property will think it is very schmick today – where the water is roaring through is his through-the-creek-bed bridge

And the graph shows its only going to get higher:

I’ll keep you updated….

Well, a little more rain for us – quietly minding our own business yesterday when the sky darkened and then it started raining.

We had to go out, so we didn’t realise what would happen, but 82 millimetres of rain fell in less than an hour!

However! Our rain gauge showed only 4 mil – so go figure. Obviously very localised.

But it definitely had an effect – a friend was in Cedar Creek and got this shot of the low bridge under:

So we missed it, but at least we weren’t flooded in or out!because as you can see from this picture, it could easily have happened!

The Brisbane storm blew through last night and we’ve had over 80 mil of rain, which came up fast and hard on the creek, peaking at over 3.5 metres.

Reports from the creek are of damage, with one edging of the green bridge blown away and some wash out.

No photos yet, and the crews are already in place, so they may repair it before I can get down there to shoot. Darn!

Creek Height:

Well, the creek has receded; I was beginning to have my doubts it would ever do so, but that was silly of course.
Once the rain stops, the creek goes down, and I should know that.
Yesterday afternoon, the rain stopped. You can clearly see it in the graph because the creek level just fell drastically.

But – the water may be down, but the damage remains to be repaired.
First, the good news. We can get out (hurray!)

But the bad news is that we can only get out by 4WD (the average sedan doesn’t have the clearance to go through some of the dips, although I suppose in an emergency it would be worth trying). The road is officially closed – the council truck was coming in to inspect as we went out and dropped the signs.

Here’s the photos.

The green bridge has taken massive damage, but by some miracle we can still cross it. There is a major wash out and there is a big bit that has been washed out underneath, so we are careful not to drive over that section. Most of the bitumen surface is gone, particularly where the concrete joins the bituman – big chunks missing!

A lot of the side rail is gone, or badly damaged.

So hopefully the council will be out to inspect and schedule the repairs immediately!

Update

Dave popped down the road and says someone has filled up the holes on the Green Bridge with dirt, to make it passable by sedan. I wouldn’t want to take my sedan through it, but ts a start!

Further down, we came to the low bridge. It is still well over and, again, where the bitumen joins the concrete, there has been a major washout – the water depth post has completely gone!

It is quite passable, however.

The otherside of the low bridge is in quite poor condition.

There are major washouts all along the road. Ignoring the green bridge, this is the worst section. We didn’t get a photo of the worst part that we have to drive over, but there is a piece where the remaining bitumen is only a metre wide and water hides how sharp the edge is.

Further up, we were finally able to see what the Curtis Lane crossing is like – to no surprise, its still under. (This is a side road which runs down as a very low crossing through the creek – it is quite common for there to be water over this road. It doesn’t even really qualify as a ‘bridge’). Someone has lost a trailer somewhere, and it is stuck across the crossing. It’ll have to be cleared before the few residents up that road are able to get out.

On our way home we checked the bridge above us (the “Fourth Bridge”). It is still under and looked fine – we didn’t walk it to check it as we had no need to go up there. You can see how high the water got from the debris line.

Finally, our neighbour’s almost-a-bridge is uncovered. There is a little damage, not much, but huge amounts of silt piled around it.

Shame about his car

Click through to yesterday to see picture of our Cedar Creek in full flood.

I thought that things would ease up by Wednesday, but I don’t think thats really the case anymore.

When we woke up this morning, a glance out the window showed that we had a bit of a landslip across the other side (ie not our property, and not any danger to our house) of the gully through which our backyard creek runs

About 9:30 this morning it got really, really dark, and thats always a bad sign!
Then the heavens let loose – it bucketed down.
Its almost 4PM and we’ve had 209 ml since 9am. Torrential!
Of course, this means the creek is up. Here’s how it went:

We have never seen it go above 5 metres before!

Lots of thunder and lightening and eventually we heard a big bang that wasn’t from the heavens. When we looked out the back there was a gap in the foliage along our side of the creek quite a ways from the house. A boulder the size of a Volkswagon was missing – it had fallen into the creek.
Now this isn’t a problem per se, but it does show a change in the edge of the gully which might eventually be a problem for the house.

Popping down the road to do a general check, we feared the neighbours had lost their new-yet-unfinished driveway.
Yesterday:

Today:

We were later told that at one point all that could be seen were the capstones at the top of the gateposts!

This was as far as we got then – the road was covered with water and it wasn’t clear that it wasn’t damaged.
The question is – is the arch still there or has it been washed away! Only time will tell!

We went home, did some laundry and cooked up some lunch and then thought we’d go check again.
Yes, the arch is still there! Phew!
However the owner had left his car in front – he has lived here for over 20 years and that spot has never been under water. He can’t say that anymore; his car was washed away. Oh dear!

The top crossing, near the school busstop, was simply monstrous. I could not believe the amount of water and so brown and muddy! You can see that the water has been much higher but its not quite as obvious how much has been washed away – there are whole boulders and huge amounts of greenery missing. Will this never stop?

We went down to the Green Bridge and – oh my! Huge damage. The barriers are mostly destroyed. This end of the bridge is mostly washed out. Its hard to tell if it is passable, but it might be. At any rate we need some urgent work by council once the water recedes. If it is passable, I do not want to be the first one across – no telling how much is missing underneath!

I’m starting to wonder just how long we will be unable to get out – will we have to have supplies choppered in?

On the way home we dropped in on neighbours who have a small creek running through their front yard at the best of times; their creek hadn’t quite reached the house, but it was a close thing. They were out trying to put rock in place to put it back where it belonged, drenched head to toe, but I don’t think they will have much success until the water recedes.

Update: Late photos from a neighbour

Here is some video of the top bridge on Cedar Creek Rd.

As you can see, the picturesque rock pool isn’t even visible – This photo of the Cedar Creek waterfall shows the ame area in better times.

Here are a couple of photos of the same area:

Thanks to Lance Winley.