MOULAMEIN is ready.
Local Rural Fire Service captain Alesha Buckley believes her community is “as prepared as we can be” amid the rising waters in the Edward River.
“When we got the advised peak of 5.9 metres, we sort of made sure everything we could get ready was ready for that, so we were sort of prepared and then if there were little issues that arose we could jump on them straightaway,” Ms Buckley told The Guardian.
“At the moment it is holding steady at 5.9m, so I think we are doing OK.”
The NSW SES on Monday issued a warning for Moulmein township to prepare to isolate, with concerns that if the Edward River got much higher the town might be become stranded.
“The community’s major concern at this stage is isolation just from roads being cut off, so access to shops and the chemist and things like that,” Ms Buckley said.
“But at this stage, we still have access to Swan Hill via roads, and Barham and Deniliquin, so none of our major accesses have been cut, which is good.”
Ms Buckley believes there is little risk to the town, with the town levee being assessed every day.
The RFS brigade has also been helping people living outside Moulamein to sandbag their properties, and have received a massive amount of help from locals willing to pitch in.
“I am just completely and utterly grateful for the help that the local community has done for us,” Ms Buckley said.
“It is wonderful to see people that aren’t actually within the RFS organisation stepping up and helping.
“We had a bit of an issue with a levee bank breach the other day, we called the community to help and within 10 minutes we had over 50 people helping.”
Ms Buckley’s advice to the community was to keep an eye on the Murray River Council’s Facebook page for road closures and updates as well at www.hazardwatch.gov.au, and if anyone required sandbags or help to call the SES on 132 500, as messages would filter back to the local RFS.
“A lot of the locals that I have spoken to know that if they need help, all they have to do is call and we will get there as quick as we can, and I think that is the beauty of a small community,” she said.
“We are all in this together – it’s not really a sprint, it’s a bit of a marathon at the moment to get through it all, but just that local community help is amazing.”
Battle for crops
FOR Moulamein farmer Jeremy Morton, the pressure is now on to try and keep his crops dry as harvest season rapidly approaches.
“All of our crops, apart from a tiny bit, are on the dry side of the levee,” Mr Morton told The Guardian.
“So the main thing we want to do is try to make sure the water doesn’t actually break through the barrier and flood it, otherwise there will be no harvest.”
Mr Morton’s properties back on to the Niemur River, which takes water out of the Edward River and runs into the Wakool River near Mallan.
Mr Morton said his some of his canola crop was almost ready to be harvested, but because of the rain was still very wet, making it hard to know when it would be dry enough to use machinery.
“We are actually spraying it with something to try and stop the pods opening and the canola all just falling out on the ground, because it sort of gets to a certain point and the pods will just open up and you will lose your crop,” Mr Morton said
“I suppose then the next thing is we have got to get it off, so it’s got to stop raining long enough to be able to harvest, and then to be able to deliver it somewhere.”
Delivery to silos during will be a big challenge for many farmers across the region, with lots of roads closed for the foreseeable future in an area where the road quality already was not great because recent rain.
“Obviously there are concerns about quality as well – if it keeps raining, as the crops gets more mature, it’s going to start downgrading the quality of the grain as well.”
