Day 4 Tuesday 20/2/2024 Rochester, hot 34˚

It’s a pleasant morning and we take a walk into town to buy another of those delicious chooks. It’s also a chance to photograph the back of the town’s painted silo which I missed the last time we visited back in November (when the others drove me out of town, without telling me there were more murals)…you could say that it took me 3 months to walk around the back of the silo.

We get back to camp hot and tired and when I open the bag…we’ve only bought half a chook! Oh well, we’re obviously too relaxed.

Our neighbours have been here in their caravan for 14 months waiting for their house to be repaired after the last floods, those of 2022. The other caravan park in town has been turned into a makeshift village for locals, using cabins and donated caravans as temporary housing. Driving around town there are a lot of empty homes, which upon closer inspection are flood-damaged. In many cases, families are living in their own vans in their front yards amid damaged building materials that are awaiting the next pick up by the Disaster Relief people. It’s surprising to see how much of the town has been decimated by the floodwaters. The majority of houses and businesses were impacted by the flood which was 500mm higher than the previous high of 115.4mAHD* in 2011.

Next door to our park the Rochester Show is setting up for the weekend. Happy hour this evening is a cold beer on the lawn by the river watching the antics of the birds. Corellas, Kookaburras, Honeyeaters and Tree Creepers. Dinner on the deck is BBQ’d Chipolatas revisited.

Accom: $42.00

*mAHD The abbreviation for elevation in metres with respect to the Australian Height Datum.

The datum that sets mean sea level as zero elevation. Mean sea level was determined from observations recorded by 30 tide gauges around the coast of the Australian continent for the period 1966–1968.

http://www.bom.gov.au/