In 2010 the banks of the Molonglo River next to Morshead drive started to shift and cracked the bikepath quite spectacularly.
Over the weekend the bikepath fell into the river and was swept away.
Russ has sent in more pictures of the damage which do raise alarming questions about the major arterial road running on top the the growing undercut pictured.
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That’ll do, cheers.
nsn said :
Not even google, just check this site.
http://the-riotact.com/stanhope-to-make-the-willows-weep/26424
TheFlyingScotsman said :
You would be pretty accurate with that date TFS. Given the stormwater drains in Banks/Conder were washed away neary 3 years ago, and the repairs have only just started 1 month ago, using the same time line, you would be correct. However, what has been started in Banks, has just been washed away,again.
Thoroughly Smashed said :
Let me Google that for you.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=willow+removal+lake+burley+griffin
Thoroughly Smashed said :
Actually what I was looking for was a specific statement from some government authority explaining the reasons for removal.
Thoroughly Smashed said :
Haven’t you noticed, the banks of rivers are a hell of a lot barer these days? They are removing all “weed species” (I think they’re going after anything non-native) and exposing riverbanks to shocking erosion. The Molonglo has really copped it. They went after the fine old cottonwoods that surrounded the old Duntroon oval, too. Just a bunch of crappy bushes around it now, it’s very much diminished.
That gravel path was really pretty, not many people knew about it, but I was using it in the 70s. It had been there a long time by the looks of it.
niftydog said :
That sounds like a very strange thing to do, can you elaborate?
willows are bad m’kay?
EvanJames said :
Since the willows were stripped out in the name of environmental salvation it’s a lot less beautiful down there.
keepitup said :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAEA1KzDynI
Thumper said :
I got it straight away.
OpenYourMind said :
Ah, didn’t realise that. Yep, that would certainly not help. At all. That’s going to be a very expensive piece of Tree Policing if they have to shore up Moreshead as a result of it. Didn’t they learn from the Thredbo landslide? No, I guess they didn’t.
OpenYourMind said :
I would say that is a very good guess, they were all stripped out of there quite a few years ago.
While I don’t purport to be a civil engineer, I could make a good guess at what’s changed to cause this collapse. The difference is that a bunch of willows (I think) were chopped out as part of the feral plant/weed erradication around the lake. I’d guess that the loss of these trees may have allowed for greater erosion. If you take a look at Google maps you can see all the trees that used to shadow this section.
There’s something interesting about this. Since, I dunno, the 70s, there’s always been a path down there, it was gravel, and actually very beautiful. At some stage they’ve put in that white pipe thing, and made a proper bike path. Now, we had huge floods in the 70s, and it survived. Now it collapses, I suspect that whatever undermining they did re the pipe and bitumen path is responsible for this.
Thumper said :
haha the simplest of things!
A big tree at the Braddon side of Northbourne flats fell and crushed the bus “shelter”. I think this is why Northbourne Ave sothbound was shut down yesterday,
john87_no1 said :
It’s yellow and blue.
Colours of the Parramatta Eels.
Its deffs comms conduit. Any idea why its called Parramatta rope?
I’ll make sure I stay in the right hand lane on my way home this afternoon.
15km/h below the speed limit, of course.
So I imagine they might actually start trying to ‘fix’ this strip of path around 2015, leaving a small strip of loose gravel as a single lane along Canberra’s flagship recreational bike route once again? Or could the fact that road users have the possibility of having some kind of surface damage actually trigger some genuine maintenance?
A novel approach would be making a bike path along a river flood-resistant … or even a metre higher? Or even a cycle lane on the adjacent road, instead of a ‘detour’ sign directing recreational cyclists onto an 80km an hour arterial with two lanes and a hard kerb?
One can only imagine what competence might look like…