Travelling through the Victorian rural city of Shepparton on my way to the BlazeAid Camp at Bookham, I decided to stay the night in the BIG4 caravan park in East Shepparton. Do the washing, empty the tanks, fill the fresh water and generally gear myself up for a few weeks of volunteer work. Good idea! Approaching Shepparton via the Midland Highway in lovely weather I couldn’t help but notice huge black clouds ahead  with curtains of rain streaming down. As I reached Mooroopna I reached the rain too. And what rain! It was as if someone had turned a hose on in the sky. I know Queenslanders will be familiar with that monsoon style of downpour, but boy oh boy, did it play havoc with the traffic in Shepparton, and just as the kids were getting out of school. The verges of the road were already underwater so I couldn’t find a safe spot to stop. My 11 metre rig  needs quite a bit of space at any time, but with visibility down to almost zero I had no alternative but to proceed very slowly. My GPS found the caravan park (this was one time I thanked my son for insisting on installing that infernal machine) and the driveway had just a few large puddles of water. I pulled in and sat waiting for the rain to ease (ha, ha!) and watched the water level rise and rise and rise. The driveway went under, the gardens went  under and an abandoned kiddies yellow plastic trike under one of the lovely trees quickly disappeared beneath the fast rising water, and all in about 15 minutes. I realised that if I didn’t jump out of the truck and brave the rain I would soon have to swim to the office to check in.

Gilligan’s Island

The owners welcomed me, I signed in, but by the time I was able to proceed to my spot, the internal roads had disappeared and I had to have a ‘pilot’ to my site. Fortunately the site had a raised concrete pad, so I was able to park the 5th wheeler up and out of the water. The truck wasn’t so lucky, sitting in three inches of water, just enough to squish into my shoes when I jumped down. And still the rain  came down for a total of four hours, and in that time Shepparton had five and a-half to six inches of rain. No rain since September (five months), and all that in just four hours. Of course the irrigation channels which supply water to the various crops were filled up very quickly and it was just my luck for the one opposite the caravan park to burst its banks, flow across Orrvale Road, and flow into the park, as it just happened to be the lowest area around. The lovely cabins had water up to their top step but none inside, the tents were floating and the occupants of the tents were moved to the recreation room to dry out. It looked like an army barracks in there, with sleeping bags, clothes,  personal possessions, soggy food stuffs and boots everywhere. I was delighted to see that the water didn’t bother the cabin occupants sitting on their verandah, sipping on a ‘coldie’ and waving to anyone who was brave enough to wade around. One enterprising soul was playing with his radio controlled mini speedboat, dodging around the trees and poles on the ‘lake’.

Shepparton

Once I had set myself up on my concrete island I decided I would look around. Donned the boots and set off  towards the office at the other end of the ‘lake’. It only took a dozen or so steps for me to realise that the water was about to fill up my boots, much too deep for an excursion, so I returned to my trailer. My raised island, which I shared with a caravan and two motorhomes, was obviously the highest part of the park as the water flowed relentlessly around, up and over everything else. I rang the office and identified myself as being on ‘Gilligan’s Island’ to find out if the laundry had suffered the same fate as the roads and paths, and the manager offered to pick me up in his ute and deliver me to the laundry block (fortunately elevated) for me to look after my laundry. He also returned me to my ‘home’ by  the same method and was my ‘pilot’ when I departed, as it was impossible to distinguish the roads. I had hoped to use the dump point, but that was under a foot of water and just to make things worse (if that was possible!) a tree with shallow roots had fallen over one of the access roads blocking an exit. On later enquiry I discovered that the telephone and EFTPOS was out for eight days, the park refused bookings for at least four days and the water took at least five days to disperse to allow the clean up to go ahead, but the manager, his wife, and their staff never lost their happy smiles and their pleasant manner.

Floating tent & BBQ area

I always like to camp near water, but I think this was a little close for comfort.

Category: Destinations
Written: Wed 01 May 2013
Printed: May, 2013
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