Flood damaged instruments

[TimRobinson]

I'm not sure if the current floods on the east coast of Oz have had any coverage internationally, with WW3 on the horizon I suspect not.  You might remember just before the plague we had the largest recorded fires. As a popular 19th century poet said, Australia is a land of droughts and flooding rains - only never on this scale. A sad photo from the Lismore Conservatorium.

 

[mysticpaw]

I grew up in Lismore on the north coast of NSW. Everyone there always referred to the flood of 1974 as the highest ever recorded at 12.3 metres. When a flood was predicted businesses, schools and homeowners in flood prone areas would move everything up onto the first floor, above the 1974 level. This year the peak height was over 2 metres above the previous high. Even second storeys have been inundated and sadly so much had been destroyed. This devastation has been repeated in so many towns along our eastern seaboard recently. Floods, bushfires are a part of our lives here... now we can add Covid to the list. But people are resilient... you only have to witness what is happening in the Ukraine at the moment to see that, and also to see the humanitarian responses of neighbours in times of strife and difficulty.

[David Stiles]

3 hours ago, mysticpaw said:

I grew up in Lismore

I was born in Lismore too.  We left there before the '74 flood but have memories of a smaller flood sometime in the 1960's.   I am amazed by news that parts of base hospital were flooded this time, hard to imagine!   

This weather is crazy.  We lost our weekender home in the bushfires, re-build it, couldn't visit it during the covid lock downs & now it's inaccessible due to floods.  Never a dull moment. 

Still, this is not even a shadow of the tragic scenes we are seeing from Ukraine. 

[jacobsaunders]

I experienced massive floods in in the 90’s when I lived in Krems an der Donau The whole of the town (except for the higher bits) got submerged in the Danube, so it certainly isn’t unique to Os. In the 18^th C, the Danube was much wider, in places with 6 or more arms, and all sorts of meanders. Also the houses were built differently, only starting properly from the first floor, downstairs being a stable. Over the centuries, people have been building dams, weirs and hydroelectric plants, and straightening it out for larger ships, to the point that water moves from Passau to Vienna in next to no time compared with earlier. After the flood, they heightened the dams, which only means that next time, Hungary will get it instead. None of that has anything to do with climate change as far as I can see. After the flood, I was given various “ruined” violins. They were covered (and filled) with a disgustingly smelling sludge. I cleaned all of the sludge off, and hung them on my balcony for several months for the smell to go away. Then stuck them back together and fitted them up, and they were as good as new

[Rue]

The wash and wear violins! 

I wouldn't have thought they would "recover" that well.