Floods in Coburg, October 1916

The rain's been coming down in buckets over the past few days and each morning I've gone out to find another 20mm or more in the rain gauge. Since last Thursday I've recorded 80mm - amazing.

The garden beds are very boggy, but the plants seem to love it, and so do I when I see the first of the broad bean shoots coming through the ground.

Let's hope it eases off now and we see some sunshine again soon. We could all do with some sunshine in our lives right now!

Taking you back 100 or so years now ...

The world was in the middle of a devastating world war when the photographs you see below were taken. 

A few months before (in July) Australian troops suffered more than five and a half thousand casualties in a two-day period at Fromelles. And between 23 July and 3 September 1916 23,000 Australians were killed or wounded in action at Pozieres and Mouquet Farm in France. Statistics like these certainly put the damage done by the October floods into perspective.

These two photos were featured in the Weekly Times, 7 October 1916, The first is of the Merri Creek in flood at Coburg. The second is of the Coburg Weir (at Coburg Lake) overflowing. The photographer was E. Moody.

And to put these floods into perspective again, the men at the Front had a terrible time over the (European) winter of 1916/17. The Somme campaign ended on 18 November but Australian troops manned the trenches during the bitter winter that followed. Rain, mud and slush turned to ice and the ground froze. Morale was low as men fell ill with rheumatism, bronchitis, trench foot and frost-bite and there were constant enemy raids and shelling.

One member of the 15th Battalion wrote 'One would open a tin of fruit or meat to find ice inside, or see liquid, spilled on his coat, freeze in a minute. The bread came frozen so hard that an ordinary knife made hardly an impression on it...'

Floods seem like nothing in comparison.