We have never seen anything like it. Around 300 mm of rain were recorded at Mt William over three days, with 200mm of that on one day ( 13 January). It could have been more on the Wonderland Range. All the FOGG members who live locally are safe, but all affected in one way or another, evacuated, or isolated or very wet or lost their drives. Halls Gap, Wartook, Dunkeld all were deluged. All of us I think still needing to boil drinking water.
But it is the Park which is of great concern. The damage is enormous. Currently the whole park is closed.
To give you a preliminary sketch:
* Mt Victory Road will be closed for weeks. It has boulders the size of buses across the road, and large sections elsewhere have subsided. The track to Venus Baths is still dangerous with unstable boulders rolling down. The road into McKenzie Falls is very badly damaged, as is the infrastructure there.
* The road between Halls Gap and Dunkeld will also be closed for weeks. There are large landslides near Mt Abrupt and at least one bridge badly damaged. Currently it is even closed between Halls Gap and Bellfield, where a landslide of mud came across and a deep gully has formed (that’s where the water main broke under its own weight when suspended over the gully), but that piece should reopen fairly soon.
* Silverband Falls road is even worse, major cut aways. Delley’s Dell is now an eroded gully – the tree ferns are all washed away. Zumsteins picnic area is apparently an awful mess.
I will add updates as I get them from Parks folk.
Grampians Tourism are daily updating a map of closed roads: www.grampianstourism.com.au
I’ll put some photos here, but the best I’ve seen so far are on “Facebook: Halls Gap Floods by Marty Schoo”:http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=679940406. PLEASE NOTE THAT MARTY TOOK THESE PHOTOS BEFORE THE PARK WAS OFFICIALLY CLOSED. PLEASE OBEY ALL CLOSED SIGNS, BOTH FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY AND NOT TO GET IN THE WAY OF REPAIR WORK.
Also ranger Andrew Dennis’s
http://grampiansphotos.blogspot.com/
There are also some on the “CFA Site”:http://www.cfaconnect.net.au/news/stawell-grampians-get-wet-quick.html and they are coming on the PV’s site.