Hawkesbury Nepean River

Hawkesbury floods of October 2022 - Time lapse videos

Here is a compilation of time-lapse footage of nine different locations around the Hawkesbury district, showing the effects of the October floods that struck us recently. Each location has had up to a week's events compressed into under thirty seconds, comprising ~64,000 frames run together.

 

Shown in order are:
• Wiseman's Ferry Road looking towards Cattai Public School
• Yarramundi Bridge near the confluence of the Grose River
• Sackville Ferry
• Webbs Creek Ferry (west side)
• Windsor Bridge
• North Richmond Bridge
• Wisemans Ferry (north and east)
• Webbs Creek (east)

 

I took images from Live Traffic NSW's cameras at key locations and mapped them to flood-height information from the Manly Hydraulics Laboratory and the Bureau of Meteorology.
In some locations, gaps caused by low light or missing images are removed.

 

I think this is an original and fascinating way of seeing the effects of what turned out to be a mild-to-moderate flood on different parts of the district. Of interest is the 'double dip' in several locations and the increasing effect of tides as you get further downstream.

 


Re-elected as Chair of the Hawkesbury River County Council

I was honoured this week to be re-elected as the Chairman of the Hawkesbury River County Council for a second, one year term.

This is a great honour. I am the first Hawkesbury Liberal Councillor ever to be elected to this role, let alone re-elected. It's been a challenging year, with most of our meetings still occurring via Zoom. Balancing the welfare of staff with maintaining on-the-ground operational capacity has not been easy.

The HRCC covers 3,823sq.km over four municipalities (Hills, Blacktown, Penrith and Hawkesbury). It has responsibility for waterway health through the control of weeds, and increasingly takes a role in terrestrial weed control as well under the Biosecurity Act.

In this last year alone it conducted 3,949 property inspections. With its specialised assets like weed harvesters, and using new and innovative techniques like biological control (Salvinia eating Weevils, anyone?), it plays a major role in caring for our local environment.

I thank outgoing Deputy Chair, Robyn Preston MP - Member for Hawkesbury for her work with the Board, and congratulate Hills Shire Councillor Samuel Uno for his election as the new Deputy Chair.