In Burrill Lake, the rain has stopped – for now.
Overnight, the small New South Wales south coast town was pummelled by heavy rain, high winds and large swells. Combined with the high tide in the early hours of the morning, the lake began to flood, inundating homes and businesses.
“The wind’s relentless, we’ve got half the park underwater and we’re just hoping the rain stays away,” Dolphin Point Tourist Park owner, Frank – who asked for his surname not to be used – says on Wednesday morning.
“Unless the rain stops [for good], the water’s not going to have an opportunity to get away. We just need a bit of a break.”
Frank’s business is one of about 200 Burrill Lake properties the State Emergency Service said were inundated by flood waters triggered by a vast coastal low which brought damaging winds, heavy downpours and wild seas to a swath of the state’s east overnight.
The Bureau of Meteorology measured 224mm of rainfall in Ulladulla, just to the north of Burrill Lake, in the 24 hours to 9am on Wednesday.
About 37,000 properties were affected by power outages across the state, including Burrill Lake, which has been without power since 8pm on Tuesday.
The BoM expects a “second surge” of low pressure on Wednesday night will bring a further burst of rain and wind to the south coast of New South Wales, and eastern parts of Victoria.
“Another 50 to 100mm is quite likely today and tonight,” BoM senior meteorologist Dean Narramore said. “That’s on top of the 100 to 200mm that we’ve already seen, particularly through parts of New South Wales.”
Frank says he’s taking things “hour by hour” and waiting to see what the next high tide – shortly before 3pm – brings.
“The problem is with the big tides and the big swells – that’s where the drama is. The worry is the next high tide [and whether] water breaches the wall at the front. We just have to wait and see,” he says.
To the caravan park’s north, the owner of Rosie Oats cafe is also hopeful the break in the rain holds.
“As long as the rain stops – like it has stopped now – then the tide shouldn’t do too much more damage,” says Rian Gough.
She ordered 200 litres of milk in preparation for the school holiday crowds she expected to serve in her cafe this weekend.
Instead – along with a bumper stock of eggs, meat, bread, fresh fruit and vegetables delivered on Tuesday – the milk is going nowhere but the bin.
When she arrived at her cafe from her home north of Ulladulla early on Wednesday, its outdoor furniture had been carried by flood waters into the road. Her produce was no longer cool and her packaging, stored behind her cafe, was waterlogged.
Still, Gough says she is “thankful” that her business was not inundated by the flood waters which she says peaked between midnight and 4am on Wednesday. Her parents’ home was flooded, as were at least 40 to 50 other homes nearby, she says.
“It’s receding a lot now, but there are still areas where there is a lot of flooding and damage,” she says.
“There’s a lot of debris from the lake, there’s a lot of dirt that’s been pushed up from the surrounding gardens. The major thing for me is all the produce loss – but these things happen.”
Parts of Burrill Lake are beginning to have power switched on, she says.
Tracy Bentick, whose power was reinstated on Wednesday afternoon, lives in the most badly flooded part of the town. Her garden was flooded but water did not enter her home.
“I was scared last night. A couple more centimetres and it would have been in my house,” she says.
“It hasn’t rained much today, so the flood has subsided, although my street still looks like the lake.”
She will be “OK”, she says, “As long as the rain stays away.”
More than 200km north, Sydney resident Frank Owen is uncertain about the fate of his holiday home, also in Burrill Lake’s north.
His property, like Bentick’s, is in a zone in which residents were advised by the SES on Wednesday morning to “shelter now” due to dangerous flooding.
Owen says the area is vulnerable to flooding and his holiday home was last inundated four years ago – but, given the power outage and the impact of the flood on the mobile phone network, he has not been able to find out how badly it was affected overnight.
“We’re just waiting to find out,” he says. “I’m not even sure if mobiles are working down there.”
