Wet welcome
RAINFALL of more than 30mm was recorded across South Gippsland on Friday, bringing short term relief to the region’s drought stricken farmers.
Koonwarra dairy farmer Shawn Hollingworth said the rain started around 4am and within eight hours the farm had received 28mm – far more than he expected.
“The forecast showed we’d get between 10 and 25mm, so 28mm has been really good,” he said.
“We just sowed some good ryegrass seed so the rain was perfect timing on the new grass.”
After enduring a failed crop due to lack of rain during late spring, last week’s rainfall will set the Hollingworths on the right track this year.
Mr Hollingworth said he cut extra hay and silage before summer, so he has not had to buy more during the season.
His water levels are also sitting well, as he had dug out a dam to increas water capacity when he moved to the farm three years ago.
The rain also came with strong winds that felled trees and cast debris across South Gippsland.
Around 8000 customers of Ausnet Services in areas such as Leongatha and Foster lost power, 550 of which were affected by a fallen tree in Leongatha’s Brown Street around 8am.
“We got the power back on for most of our customers fairly quickly. Some were out for just a few minutes, others were back on within the hour,” Ausnet Services spokesperson Hugo Armstrong said.
“However, around 85 of our customers who were closer to the incident did not have their power turned back on until the tree was removed and repairs to the powerline had been made at 12.45pm.”
Many local businesses connected to Ausnet Services were luckily enough to only have their power shut off for an hour before their peak trading hours.
“Our power was out for an hour but we understand anything can happen during a storm,” owner of Marriotts Motorcycles and Power Equipment Tim Marriott said.
Leongatha’s SES received 26 jobs, attending mostly fallen trees and building damages.
“Several roofs were damaged – fortunately only minor damage,” Leongatha SES’s Tony Lindhard said.
“Some trees and branches caused moderate damage. One house had three large branches fall onto three cars and one trailer.”
SES cleanup crews were sent out at 8am and battled against the elements when the wind picked up around 1pm.
South Gippsland Shire Council was notified of 50 fallen trees that needed removal – some roads had multiple fallen trees on them – while Bass Coast Shire Council reported six fallen trees and no road blocks.
Good soak: Koonwarra dairy farmer Shawn Hollingworth welcomed last Friday’s downpour.
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Posted by Tayla Kershaw on Mar 22 2016. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry
