I drove from Williamstown through Footscray and down into the Maribyrnong flatlands where the mud is still visible. I grew up on a ridge overlooking this valley and we would walk down steep Afton Street every time the river flooded to watch the water lapping at some park bench or even a house. Few thought it would happen again, falling victim to the common misguided belief that the world is on a continual improvement plane, and disasters (except for climate change) are all in the past. Indeed, the painted post showing the height of the 1920s and 1974 floods was some kind of local curiosity, a kind of totem pole showing ancient events, to gaze at knowing the water could never - in a million years - go up again to that neck-ricking height. Impossible, they said: the river mouth had been widened, the estuary had been dredged, weather bureaucrats had insisted rain would never again fill dams. Maribyrnong in spate, let alone the river flats flooded? Never.
You can fool yourself into believing anything. Even the river's Wikipedia site describes its lower reaches as 'meandering through a floodplain'. How could it 'never flood again'?
It was the biggest flood ever: everyone was wrong. That was three or four weeks ago. This morning I watched, as I drove down Van Ness Avenue into the flats, workmen still dragging soaked plaster walls, rotting floorboards and other detritus out onto the roadsides. The job has become urgent due to the sudden hot weather.
I crossed the river at the Raleigh Road bridge and turned left past the Marby Park cricket ground that had also been under water a few weeks ago.
A groundsman was out on the pitch with a hose.
He was watering it.
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When India played Pakistan in the T20 World Cup at the Melbourne Cricket Ground last week, 90,293 spectators attended. Last night 82,507 watched India v. Zimbabwe at the same venue. I need not - but will - mention (as it is quite obvious) that the home side was in neither game, having been eliminated.
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