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Flash floods
overdog  
Posted : Tuesday, 7 February 2012 6:51:18 PM(UTC)
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It occurred to me yesterday as I was face down in the river if there was a flash flood youd be buggered unless you heard it coming... anybody had this happen to them?
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Lammerlaw  
Posted : Tuesday, 7 February 2012 7:28:59 PM(UTC)
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I got a heck of a fright about halfway through January when I went down to a stream that is usually a mere trickle to join my son and a guest from Belgium to find that the stream was a raging torrent - I was in a real panic then and took off on my bike down the track to where my son was mining and yelled out - As it turned out they got caught when the stream went from nothing to 4.5 cumecs by measure in five seconds - my son was washed downstream, he managed to grab his pack as it flowed past him, he saw an electircal cord under water and grabbed it thus saving my Minelab Xtreme detector. The chap from Belgium lost his new 1000 Euro camera plus some of his Gold mining tools. They both escaped out of the river on the far side so had to walk well over a mile through tall tussocks to get back to the truck which I had driven around to meet them.
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overdog  
Posted : Tuesday, 7 February 2012 8:26:41 PM(UTC)
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Jesus Lammerlaw-At least everyone came out of it ok.

I'll be keeping an eye out from now on...

Was it just a cloudburst?

Edited by user Tuesday, 7 February 2012 8:27:43 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified
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Lammerlaw  
Posted : Tuesday, 7 February 2012 10:11:30 PM(UTC)
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Originally Posted by: overdog Go to Quoted Post
Jesus Lammerlaw-At least everyone came out of it ok.

I'll be keeping an eye out from now on...

Was it just a cloudburst?


It had been raining heavily for a couple of days previous though it was totally unexpected under the circumstances however. My son and the chap from Belgium were extremely lucky - my son had actually taken him to a spot to retreive some nuggets my son had detected the day before so that the chap had something to take home to Europe. The Belgium guy never worked the crevice that far as the water came down ten minutes after getting to the spot but my son has been back since and retrieved all the gold that was there - my son was lucky as he had just come up through a gorge before hte water tore down.

As for the chap from Belgium - When we got back to the big city I ended up giving him maybe five grammes from my own supply to take home as a souvenir of his trip.

Not the worst trip I had as I was once trapped in the tent up in the back of beyond for eight days one January though on that occasion I did get one and a quarter ounces on the eighth day when the river had gone down enough to work a spot that is usually really shallow.
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Shelia  
Posted : Wednesday, 8 February 2012 8:16:38 AM(UTC)
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You can get a little taste of a flash flood at Waipouri when water is released from one of the dams...
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Lammerlaw  
Posted : Wednesday, 8 February 2012 11:41:54 AM(UTC)
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Originally Posted by: Shelia Go to Quoted Post
You can get a little taste of a flash flood at Waipouri when water is released from one of the dams...


Do you mean the Number 4 powerhouse - I have seen it come up there in a matter of a very short space of time so am assuming that is where you refer. There are no other places to the best of my knowledge where you could get caught without trespassing are there? I am unsure about the other powerhouses and the stream downstream from them - Do they feed back into pipes? I really dont know as it is years since I pottered around between the power houses - I know that the dam below the DCC settlement was drained one year and I walked along the river bed - the rest of the bed of the lake was deep in slimey silt - I never found one colour of Gold - not a flake.

Edited by user Thursday, 9 February 2012 10:40:19 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified
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