TMR Range Road Update Friday 8 February
Category: Uncategorized
Paluma in the Rain
You will all have seen on the television broadcasts, the widespread flooding around the Townsville – Ingham areas that unprecedented rainfall has caused. Our thoughts and sympathy go to those people in Bluewater and other areas where homes and property have been destroyed or damaged.
How has Paluma fared so far during this extreme weather event?
Paluma residents are used to receiving heavy rains during the Monsoon season but the rainfall over the past few weeks has been exceptionally heavy and unremitting with very heavy falls over the last five days of January. The total for the month was 1208 mm. Many long-term residents say that while heavy rainfall over a period of a few days is not unusual, the duration of this wet weather event is. Nothing like it has been seen for at least 30 years.
Since Wednesday morning the Range Road has been closed due to fallen trees and land slips. TMR are working at restoring the road but are hampered by the continuing wild weather. Predictions are that we will experience at least another week of wet weather, so it possible that Paluma could remain isolated for several more days. Maybe it is time to launch the Ark from Noah’s Ark Creek.
Along the Range Road (when it was still possible to travel to see the sights), the waterfalls were spectacular, the seething water plunging through clefts and grottoes and cascading out and over the road. Twin Falls gushed out like a huge fountain forcing cars through a natural car-wash. Sheets of water hung to rock faces, reflecting light like vast mirrors while rivulets of water coursed across the road. The road surface was littered with leaves and small broken branches. Every so often a very bedraggled brush turkey would make a suicidal dash across the road.
In the village, channels of water rush alongside and over the road, lawns are water-logged, trees have fallen, others hang their limbs low weighed down with the burden of water in their foliage and inconveniently, water has seeped into the lower levels of several houses having forced its way through cracks in brickwork. Birds are ravenous and flock in great numbers to wherever they can find a feed tray; Lorikeets and the smaller honey-eaters happy to share the same dining-room.
It will be time soon, if some have not already done so, to light fires to dry out the houses and our sodden shoes and raincoats.
Text and Photos by Colwyn Campbell
Written on 1st February
Famous Paluma structure goes up in flames!
Even the editors at Paluma.org can’t resist the odd attention grabbing headline (or click bait as it is now called) …….
Last week saw the famous Anagama wood-fired kiln blaze into life at the Paluma Pottery on Lennox Crescent. Len Cook, our local award-winning Pottter, spent the last several months making hundreds of pots of various sizes and shapes, in preparation for the annual wood firing.
The process started last Monday evening (October 29) at 8pm and finished exactly 100 hours later at midnight on Friday. Prior to the start of the firing the lower part of the shelter that houses the kiln was chocked full of firewood, mostly pine and black wattle from the blocks at Hussey Road. By Friday most of the wood had been fed into the kiln, producing temperatures in excess of 2,000 degrees in the front part of the kiln. Continuous stoking of the fire was needed to maintain the temperatures that allow the wood ash that constantly flows over the pots to melt and form a wonderfully variable glaze on the pots. Len, together with Kelly Davis and Jamie Oliver worked shifts feeding the kiln, monitoring temperatures and making the odd adjustment to airflow vents and shutters.
Each time new wood was added (about every 15 min, 24 hours a day) the chimney would produce billows of smoke and fire, which was particularly impressive at night.
The kiln is currently in cool-down mode and Len will not know what the results of this year’s efforts have been until later this week. But given the wonderful results from previous firings, there should be some spectacular pieces.
More pictures:
Platypus on the Village Weir
Following the sighting of a platypus on the Village Weir in late September there have been 4 other confirmed sightings and it would seem that this individual has taken up residence (hopefully for the long term) in the weir.
Sightings have been primarily in the early morning (6-7am) and it appears to prefer the left side bank (looking up from the weir wall).
A list of all recent sightings can be found here. If you happen to see our new aquatic resident please contact Jamie Oliver with details so he can add this to the sightings record.
The video below shows the Platypus swimming across the weir from right to left early in the morning on October 28, 2018.
video by Juanita Poletto