Victoria Underwater: the 1934 Floods
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 28 авг 2022
- Melbourne and Victoria have been through many floods and storms throughout history. However, one of the most significant and damaging in modern times was that in 1934.
The Yarra River and many other watercourses burst their banks, creating vast lakes of water that displaced thousands of people, killed 36 and caused damage to every single suburb of Melbourne and many other places across the state.
-------------
My website: philipmallis.com
-------------
MORE INFORMATION
TSS Coramba: soe.org.au/projects/tss-coramba/
Bureau of Meteorology page: webarchive.nla.gov.au/awa/200...
-------------
SOURCES
philam.github.io/videonotes/v...
I acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands on which this video was filmed, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people. I pay respects to Elders past, present and emerging and their extensive historical connection to land, water and country.
The Yarra River has gone through considerable modification, especially from Docklands through to Kew and the upper Yarra Reservoir. The waterfall at Queens Bridge was dynamited in 1883, The course of the river through to Cremorne was altered considerably. The banks from Hawthorn to Kew were straightened and made much higher.
Even the pound bend tunnel.
My late father was 10 years old when these floods happened, we spoke about the issues of that time and fortunately their home and shoe business was not directly affected by the floods. They did help others who were affected, and my grandfather built a temporary apartment at their Hawthorn house to house a displaced family.
That's fascinating, the floods certainly had big impacts on many people. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks Philip. Well covered and well communicated. Cheers.
Another great Video Philip. I wasn't even aware of the 1934 flood. I love to hear about and see the history of Melbourne. Keep up the great work!
Many thanks!
Such interesting Melbourne history. Love your videos. I’m born in Melbourne. I’ve never known these things. Fascinating to me.
Thanks very much, glad you like them!
This is awesome! It popped up on my feed as I was searching the current floods. You have done a great job addressing cause, effect, and reactions.
Thank you, glad you enjoyed it!
"A massive lake from Warrandyte to South Yarra!" Scary....
I built a home at Koo Wee Rup about 27 years ago. Due to the floods, the council made us build the house on stilts because it was a flooding area.
My father used to talk about a big flood in the 30's and he said it went from the Mordialloc bridge to Eel Race rd Carrum.
Thanks for Including Orbost & the snowy river bridge
Excellent video, great research and presentation. Thank you.
Thanks, glad you enjoyed it!
great video. I love floods and stories of them. Of course Dights Falls was a dam built to provide a leet and headwaters for the mill.
Excellent video. "Housing Commission Flats" are another response that is still there today, the flood in Flemington would have been where (next to Moonee Ponds Creek, not on the adjoining hill) the (above flood level) flats are now
it's great to access to a local historian !!!
Love your videos Phillip, like your freeway series. More please.
Thank you, glad you enjoy them!
Also, the Toorak Road bridge at Tooronga was washed away. Glenferrie Road was impassable at the Kooyong bridge.
Thank You Philip fantastic history video.
Glad you enjoyed it
Thank you for that well informed documentary,
It'd be nice to see you rowing or motoring a punt along the length of the Yarra say from Yarra Glen to Jeffs Shed.
The Yarra bend bridge is normally around 10 or more metres above the river level, so that is quite spectacular.
I have seen a photo of the street where my grandfather and all his family lived, in South Richmond, right in front of the Yarra, under water…
Nice work
I can't believe I had forgotten about this video...
I am well aware that these floods occurred but I’ve always been a bit short on the detail , it was just “back in the 1930’s”. Where I was brought up from 1954 there is a creek with banks 40 to 50 feet in height in some places, as kids’s we just accepted that this was just a creek, no time-lines. In fact it was a huge piece of erosion ; one of the old time residents explained to me that this “creek” was created in about a week by a massive flood in the 1930’s. The background here was that it was a time of drought, so there was little vegetation to stop run-off, the soil was granite, (read sandy) as well there were rabbit plagues to further de-nude the country. What had been there previously was a type of seasonal swamp , just a flat dampish stretch of ground that people used to plough and crop. The overall results of this erosion was to firstly scour large wash-outs out of the hills and to send thousands of tons of granatic sand down the creeks and into the Mollison creek , so much that a sand industry was established in the village of Pyalong to harvest the sand and send it by train to Melbourne for building material,(cement). This video is the most specific time-line I have seen into the specific dates of this event, which was a fairly major envioromental disaster.
Great video!
There might another that might be of interest in 1973 (I believe) it was particularly bad for Marybyrnong (near the last videos about the defence department)
Thanks! And yes that was possibly 1972 when large parts of inner Melbourne were inundated. www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/from-the-archives-1972-chaos-as-floods-batter-melbourne-20200213-p540oi.html
big flooding around warrandyte right up to the shops !
@@ronnieboucherthecrystalcraftsm Sorry to hear! :(
The Yarra flooded so quickly and dramatically in the late 90s, that it blew the manhole covers off the adjacent streets and flung them 35 metres into the air.
Thankyou Philip for producing this very important piece of work. Have you looked at some of the great fires in the Dandenong's - I think there was one in the 1920's and another in the late 50's.
Thank you and not yet, I'll add them to the list. Thanks for the suggestions!
I live just outside Koo Wee Rup and am going to see if the local historical people have any more info about the flooding around my area. Awesome videos mate.
Thanks! And yes I'm sure they'd have a lot of information from the time, Koo Wee Rup was one of the most affected settlements. You can see some photos and accounts from the newspapers of the time on Trove, like this one here: nla.gov.au/nla.news-article10998236
The best place to start for the 1934 flood at KWR is Neil Gunston's 'The Good Country', a history of the old Cranbourne Shire. Boats from Tooradin rescued KWR residents. The problem for the town of KWR was that the railway line had to be raised quite a way above the land because it went through a swamp but this high embankment had no drainage and the water backed up into KWR to a level of 6 feet, there may be a mark still recorded on the old buildings
I looked up the rainfall. 58mm fell in the city on the 29th of November, and 81mm fell the next day. This was after 156mm fell during October
I was hoping to hear you talk about how that flood created the Montague street bridge, as the road underneath was raised up after the flood which is why the bridge is so low.
Unless I’m misremembering?
Here in Pakenham, during the 1934 flood, a pig is reputed to have floated down the main street on a hay bale. All I have to say about that is it must have been a small pig.
You can still see names written on the Chandler highway bridge in 1934. They are just under the roadway, 30 plus feet above the ground.
Oh I always wondered how they got up that high, thank you!
I’ll take you for a paddle when the Yarra reaches a 30 foot flood next time. Maybe not to paint our names on the bridge. The construction of the Chandler highway bridge was supervised by Sir John Monash.
Thais point is called the Chandler highway choke. It acts like a retarding basin. In a flood the water backs up over the 4 golf courses, which lets the water down the river slowly which reduces flooding down stream.
I drive through Koo Wee Rup at times and it has always been swamp land but drained using channels and seeing it flood is priceless. It is my dream that one day Koo Wee Rup & Carrum Carrum Swamp will be void of people and returned back to its natural state. And we will still be around living in abundance and in harmony with the natural world.
Koo wee rup is now a major development site for new houses, having already completely covered the former farming district of Clyde.
It is certainly worthwhile imagining the Koo Wee Rup Swamp in its natural state, about 400 sq km dominated by dense Melaleuca; if ever a Bunyip had a habitat, it was there. As for returning to that natural state, the best for now is to contribute to the work on the coastal fringes of the old Swamp, such as mangrove plantings. Climate change might just flood it all again anyway, it's all at or below sea level (the old peat soils dried upon drainage, so it sunk a bit). There are plenty of accounts in the local histories of the old Swamp, Gunston's 'The Good Country', the history of the old Cranbourne Shire is the place to start.
@@DavidNotSolomon Clyde is just a bit elevated and just outside the fringe of the Swamp. The black peat soil land is way too flood prone for intensive development, saying that Koo Wee Rup to me looks overdeveloped already and at major flood risk.
The drains were designed for the "1 in 100 years flood" before climate change and before there was so much run off into feeder streams. The drains have not been maintained to the standards they were designed for, erosion, rabbit burrows, willows etc. The drains and levees can only hold so much water anyway before discharge into Westernport Bay becomes the problem, it all being so low lying. Sea level rise, peak tides, storm surges combined with massive rain feeding into the Bunyip River system would see the flood water backed for quite a way.
@@openmodalguitar61 A friend of mine works for Melbourne Water - he says they are being told to come up with plans for developments between Kooweerup and Packenham. He is an engineer there and they have told MW that the soil is unsuitable for building - it loses stablity very easily and becomes almost fluid. They were told to just make it happen. Also I know old farmers from Tooradin and Pearcedale - they talk of how after the drainage was done the soil had what they called 'crab-holes' - one left his tractor in the field, came back an hour later and all he could see was the exhaust sticking out the top - it had sunk completely into the ground.
@@DavidNotSolomon Not one word of that surprises me. Generations of greedy fools in Melbourne have looked at maps of all that land just south east of the metropolis and dreamed of defying Nature in the hope of great fortune. Nuclear power on French Island used to be spruiked every so often, although hopefully by now somebody realises the actual proximity to Melbourne in terms of radiation is a bit risky. A big airport at Caldermeade has some big backers, despite the near certainty of highly toxic runoff into Westernport Bay.
Intensive development in the KWR Swamp is a big mistake for so many reasons, it just defies Nature to smack down the hubris. A massive downpour in the hills combined with a King Tide and a storm surge on the Bay will fill the drains, then the levees, but the Bay won't take any water, it will push water back. Do they have a rescue plan? Have they modelled this scenario?
If you are interested in the geology of the Swamp there is a book written by a geography teacher at KWR some years ago 'From Swampland to Farmland' by Dave Roberts, small print run but worth searching for
Interested to see Scotch College, Hawthorn, underwater at 0:45. Similar flooding happened again in 1972. Most of the school grounds were underwater and this was one of the highlights of my secondary education.
Hey there's a scotch college in Perth as well 😁
And to think I was talking about the effects of the flood out in Bunyip just this morning
I remember the Yarra flooding in about 19 70-71.. Is that correct?
1972
@@benno920 I know there was a flash flood on Elizabeth street... but I do remember my mother driving to Willsmere Park in Kew and seeing to completely covered in water.. and I remember the news reports that the South Eastern Freeway was about to be flooded....
Yes 1972 that's right, and Kew was one of the worst suburbs affected (including power blackouts too). Some videos and photos here: ruclips.net/video/L9wT3MUXFWQ/видео.html
www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/from-the-archives-1972-chaos-as-floods-batter-melbourne-20200213-p540oi.html
@@hypercomms2001 Elizabeth street used to be a creek - the CUB buildings at the North end used to have their mainframe computers in the basement and they had pumps ready in case of flooding.
@@DavidNotSolomon thank you, but ….I would have thought they would be more worried of re-creating. The great London flood of 1814…
ruclips.net/video/fCcZVUncDSI/видео.htmlsi=FKm_KmoITBnANg27
Seeing seymour report at 3ft above flood seems nothing compared to the 12 foot under in October
The Victorian SES reports *in the 1870s the “Great Flood” submerged the entire town.*
@@yt.damian I wouldn’t be surprised, they hide those stats so they can push their climate change agenda sadly
Marybyrnong just flooded
we insist on building in low lying areas. "reclaim" flood plains and gouged the rivers for industrial transport. gouged rivers deliver oversupply of water faster. as a consequence we have no reserves (in floodplains) of water during droughts and any excess rain is quickly directed into fast flowing rivers. the increased turbidity helped change the ecosystem, favouring muddy water species. lets not forget the toxic pollutants dumped into rivers, as short term profits trumped any other considerations. we have mostly ourselves to blame but anyhow, nature is not a directed force, but we also play a role here, with climate change.
Putting out bush fires also ruins the forests natural processes. Humans like nature so long as it's convenient for then
Oh no Global warming. I love old papers research keep them coming.
Hey someone tell the Greens we have floods and not climate change.
Shhh climate change is big business...keep the fear alive
🙄
And then we have Maribyrnong council just go and change the flood zone based on some developer lobbying while a race course go and protect their private interests at the expense of the rest of the public. Glad it's so easy to make a buck!
The race course board protected their operation . By your logic any business with flood barriers should be shamed for preventing water damage to themselves.
@@interestedobserver587 yes, capitalism. Socialise the losses and privatise the gains.
Of course, if we had any competent regulator in this country, that private interest would have never obtained the approval to put an entire suburb at risk for their trivial interests.
@@interestedobserver587 "at the expense of the public" OP was clear about that part and you ignored it.
@@GLENC0C0 No I didn't. I pointed out the ridiculous notion that an enterprise taking risk mitigation steps is some how at the expense of the general public. Thats like saying wearing seatbelts, fitting lane assist and dynamic breaking is wrong because it stopped you joining others in a pile up on the highway.
I suggest that you look into the history of the Maribyrnong River.
"Since 1871 there have been 27 recorded floods in the Maribyrnong area, with large floods occurring approximately every 10-20 years. Did you know? The highest recorded flood affecting the Maribyrnong floodplain was in September 1906, and the next known highest was in May 1974." Local Flood Guide - Maribyrnong, Footscray and Yarraville, published by City of Maribyrnong.
Don't need this these days with everything else
This post aged like fine wine!
Imagine if these floods happend today. We'd have all the usual idiots claiming it was "climate change", which we all know now is total fantasy.
all because of Global farting
50 mph winds = 80 klph winds = like not what you said = and paper head lines read 50 MPH - or are jou just crapping on = lies ?
Hi Ronnie, I do not lie. The figure of 110km/h comes from several sources, including the National Emergency Management Agency: knowledge.aidr.org.au/resources/flood-melbourne-and-victoria-1934/
The headlines of the time do read 50 miles per hour, which is 80 kilometres per hour when converted. However, as with many disasters, many of the facts of the event were only confirmed at a much later stage.
You can see all of the sources that I use for all of my videos in the description if you want to check up on anything else. Thanks.
hey was global worming a thing then or was it something else