Still As Life

Lismore is one of the last places you expect to see a dozen helicopters, especially all in one area. Specifically, all on one sports field.

Normally there are 2 helicopters in Lismore that are seen on a regular basis, both of these are operated by the Westpac Rescue Helicopter service. Aside from that, there is rarely any other helicopter presence in Lismore. I believe there are 1 or 2 smaller one's at the airport on a regular basis, but I am not certain on that.

However, with all of the flooding and people being stranded and cut off from any supplies in Coraki, Woodburn and surrounding towns, it seems our house is right in the flight path of the helicopters running regular supply and surveillance flights, including the state premier's personal tour of the natural disaster zone. I decided to go and find out where the helicopters were all coming and going from as I couldn't see where they were all coming and going from. The airport has been partially flooded and thus really unusable until possibly this afternoon, and aside from that there are only a few other open level places in Lismore that could be used, the down town sports fields, the various school sport fields, and the sport's field at the Goonellabah RSL Club. I hadn't seen any helicopter activity in downtown Lismore whilst I had been down there so the first place I checked was the Goonellabah RSL, and yep, it has effectively become the base for 12+ helicopters.

There were 8 helicopters on the ground while I was there having a look and taking photo's, a 9th landed just before I left, and there had been another 3 in the air. Whether there are more or not, I don't know.

None of these helicopters were the Westpac Rescue Helicopters, and the majority of them were bigger choppers than any you would expect to see in somewhere as small as Lismore.

The past few days there have been 8+ flights directly over our house each day, some days more. Given that our place is only a couple minutes drive from the RSL, these helicopters have all been quite low already when they have been flying over our place, so they have seemed quite a bit louder than usual.

It really was quite a surprise to see so many out there. It is kinda cool though.

It seems my flood predictions weren't so bad, just not for the right area. Lismore didn't flood much due to the flood levy, but downstream further, Coraki and Woodburn have got it pretty bad. Evidently, the flood waters aren't expected to recede for the rest of this week. Lismore ended up getting within about a metre of the top of the levy to my knowledge.

Kyogle also got some major flooding up river from Lismore earlier that is still gradually receding.

As far as I know there haven't been any casualties or major injuries as of yet, so hopefully things will stay that way.

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