It has got to the point where local farmers have stopped counting the number of floods in the Orbost district.
Flooding out of the catchment and from local rain events has been topped up by regular releases from Jindabyne Dam, sending water down the Snowy River to the mouth of the sea at Marlo.
The latest flood (at time of writing) was in late October. There is standing water and lakes in many paddocks.
For Dennis Reynolds, the regular floods mean degraded laneways and dead pasture.
“Laneway maintenance is an ongoing issue, because it keeps chopping up,” he said.
“At the Orbost farm, pasture renovation will be necessary. Orbost is sown with rye-grass, except it’s been covered by floodwater regularly for the past 18 months.
“There’s 130ha of flat country and about 32ha that we haven’t used in the last 18 months.
“Other parts of that farm we’ve sown three times, and we’ve decided not to resow now until the weather dries up.
“We haven’t cut any silage or hay, or got much production out of that flat country.
“We’re getting a lot of weeds including dock, buttercup and other weeds which we haven’t seen in a long time.”
With debris coming through with the water — wattle trees and big logs out of the Snowy River headwaters — fencing repairs have been a regular occurrence on both farms.
Dennis said he was able to get his milking herd away from the floodwater with 10 minutes to spare before the Snowy River spilled over the six-metre-high levee at Lynn’s Gulch, Jarrahmond.
“I could hear it coming, and I got the last lot of the cows off that country 10 minutes before the deluge,” he said.
“The Brodribb and Snowy rivers, Jones Creek and some big gullies all carry water from the catchment.
“When it rains, that water spreads out. Then it gets topped up from regular spills from the Jindabyne Dam.
“There’s a lot of kikuyu on the Jarrahmond farm, oversown with rye-grass and clover. That will bounce back.”