I was about Heather's age and we were living at Ngapeke when, in 1979, there came a "once in 25 years" storm that brought tons of dirt and stones down onto the road, washed it down our driveway and overwhelmed the fishponds, lawns, lake and vehicles and left 2 feet of mud over everything it encountered. When the rain stopped, the road outside was buried in 18 inches of mud that closed the road for several days and left our van buried to its sills.

This time, the people that live there now were much luckier - the measures Reg took after the 1979 storm to deflect the mud and protect the property from future burials by slippage worked again and they suffered little damage.

Unfortunately I have no pictures from when we were there, but today I took some of this, the latest muddy interment.

This is the road outside our old place yesterday, and the picture clearly shows the hole in the hill that used to be paddock and now isn't any more. This new hole is about half to 2/3 the size of the one formed when the hill fell on us all 26 years ago and the thoroughness and speed of the clean up suggests much less came down the road and more went across it, engulfing Sellar's farm opposite instead.







It took years to stop freaking out when the heavy rains came and it took years to repair all the damage. For some reason, I'm kinda glad I don't live under that hill any more...

You can visit the Flood pics in more depth here.