WATER SPOUTS?

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21404, 21 February 1935, Page 14

WATER SPOUTS?

—vI STRANGE EXPERIENCE OF | SHEPHERDS CAMP IN DANGER OF BEING WASHED AWAY A party of shepherds on a station near Hanmer Springs had a most exciting experience recently when their camp was in danger of being swept away by walls of water described as water spouts. The spouts came down a gully at racing speed, picked up some food and some odd gear lying about, and went on out of sight, just missing the two tents in which the shepherds were camped. The adventure began with a thunderstorm. The shepherds had been moving camp and had not been long under cover on the new site when thunder began to rumble unceasingly. Presently, one of the men heard another rumble and went outside to investigate. Down a little creek in a gully, he saw an almost perpendicular wall of water about six feet high rushing toward the tents at racing speed. It was carrying boulders and wood with it as though they had been as light as cork. The man unfastened a dog from a bush to which it was tied, and had no sooner done so when a second spout, about two feet higher than the first, rooted the bush away and deposited a heap of boulders in its place. There was then a general rush toward the pack saddles and other gear; but it was found that the second spout had carried off some halters and a box of food. As Though a Dam had Broken It looked, said one of the men in describing the scene, as though a dam had broken, but that had not happened, for there was no d*m in the creek. He said rocks weighing about five tons were swept along by the spouts. The second of the spouts went right to the edge of the tent pitch, and no time was lost in moving the tent a little further from the creek bed.

Some of the men were considerably shaken by their experience, but they all went to bed eventually, only to be awakened after about two hours by the head shepherd, who had heard another spout coming. Heavy rain was falling, but the whole party could hear the water plainly as it raced down the gully. The rolling boulders, too, were causing the ground to vibrate as though with an earthquake. The site of the camp was up the Acheron Valley, and it is said that the weather has been very strange there during the lost few months. A cloudburst is said to have washed huge hollows in about an acre of the hillside and to have carried boulders into a mass at the foot of the hill. A hundred yards from this place there had been hardly any rain at alh