It will probably take quite a while for full details to be discovered and information gathered on how much damage the Western Tiers sustained during the recent floods. I thought I would start the ball rolling by letting you know what I have heard from locals or gone and looked at myself. Please feel free to add your own knowledge as further things come to light.
- There have been at least seven large landslips on the Western Tiers face in the last fortnight, from Mother Cummings Peak to Western Bluff. Some of these are in areas that will not affect walkers. At least one track is completely destroyed and possibly even the feature that track went to - namely Westmoreland Falls - the locals have not yet been able to determine if the falls still exist or in fact exactly where the creek goes now as a whole new gorge has been created. Several creeks have changed their courses as the usual karst system creeks that flow underground have been clogged with debris and silt - some possibly permanently.
- The wet caves system may have significant damage (could someone with more info let us know)
- Stone Hut, Bastion Cascades, etc, right through to Meander Falls and Dixons Track is not currently accessible as both bridges have been destroyed on the access road. Not sure how long they will take to fix this, but unless there is still a need to access logging coups it may not be a priority. This also begs the question of how all these tracks have fared considering the damage downstream, uprooted trees, completely changed watercourses, masses of debris that came down the mountains.
- At least two of the landslips are visible from Deloraine i.e. they are several hundred metres wide and quite long! One of the most siginifcant is visible from South Mole Creek Rd and appears to be in the vicinity of Western Creek track, maybe somewhere to the left - starts at approx. 800 metres elevation and it is at least 500metres or more long and I'm not sure what it has taken with it, track or roadwise - I will hopefully investigate next week. It looks like it may well have reached Western Creek itself.
As more information comes to light I will add here - hopefully others will do the same. There may be significant track work to be done, if anyone is interested in helping.
There are some interesting articles on the ABC website and an old report about previous landslips in the area by Laurie Goldsworthy on the internet if anyone is feeling like a good read.