Tasmania floods: Deloraine property Drumreagh cut off in both directions
Homes at Deloraine have been inundated by flood waters and one couple has told how their property has become a virtual island in the disaster. WATCH THE VIDEO
Tasmania
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A number of houses on Deloraine’s River Rd have flooded, while outer locales such as Reedy Marsh remain totally cut off by the heaving Meander River.
The Mercury spoke with a four-person SES crew on River Rd about 10.15am.
They said they started work at 2pm Thursday afternoon, clocked off at 1am and were back on deck at 5.30am on Friday morning.
“We’ve done jobs from Mole Creek to Deloraine to Meander,” one said.
“It’s been a long, long time since we’ve seen the river this high. We’re not sure when the peak is meant to be, but it does seem to be slowing down.
“There’s houses and units underwater that have never had water before.”
Stephen Sherriff, a sixth-generation Deloraine resident, concurred the river was “as high as I’ve seen it”.
“As a teen in the 1980s and 1990s, flooding like this was a regular occurrence,” he said.
“But I don’t think a lot of houses are impacted.”
Amie How took her kids Blake and Madi to Deloraine Train Park as they “wanted to come see the train was okay”.
Blake and Madi had smiles on their faces as they sloshed through the turgid river in gumboots.
Ms How said she had family in Mole Creek who had been cut off by the river but they weren’t in any immediate danger.
Farmstay accommodation owners at Deloraine have told how their property has become a virtual island in the floods, with access to their property cut off in two directions by rising waters.
Melissa Sherriff and her partner Andrew Gleeson own the short-stay property Drumreagh Cabins about 3km from the centre of Deloraine on River Road.
“We are pretty much cut of at our driveway, to be honest” Ms Sherriff said.
“Water cut the road in both directions about 3am, but we are high enough to be all OK.
“We have only been here 12 months but talking to our neighbours, they say they’ve never seen it so bad,” she said.
“One of our neighbours just up the road has water halfway up his house.”
“He managed to get a lot of his things out beforehand. H’s at his house, but there is nothing he can do.”
Ms Sherriff said guests had checked out of the cabin farm-stay property on Thursday, a day ahead of their due checkout time, to avoid the floods. Another family had cancelled their bookings for the weekend.
Karina Dambergs, owner of Deloraine’s Red Brick Road Ciderworks, has already had two leased sheds on Highland Lakes Rd consumed, and she is hoping the water doesn’t rise into her main buildings.
Ms Dambergs, daughter Beatrix and a friend spent Friday morning drinking coffee outside the ciderworks, watching the water’s inexorable rise up Highland Lakes Rd.
A number of buildings within the area’s industrial estate are mostly submerged.
She said the most nervous part of her morning was watching an unmoored shipping container float down the road, with concerns it may have veered right and smashed into her building, rather than its eventual course which saw it tangled in trees.
“It’s hard to gauge (whether it’s still rising) but the water’s stopped coming inside,” she said.
“We didn’t expect it to be this high, it’s definitely higher than 2016.”
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