The Macquarie and Namina Falls in Flood

 The Macquarie River continues in flood, for the first time in many years. This week I took a break from filming and travelled to Burrendong Dam and then downstream to Dripstone and Namina Falls to pay my respect to the elders.

Burrendong is full, and the spillway was thundering.

The small locality of Dripstone carries a name that resonates through many of the western settlements - boasting a soak that remains damp through drought. Some dripstone soaks proved fatal to stock - bringing poisons to the surface.

Dripstone boasts an old brick and render church that I could not resist. Today it is protected by rusting iron  but I wonder if the original roof was clad in tiles.

Western falls, like Namina on the Macquarie at Wellington, are sometimes easy to overlook - in times of drought or modest flow, they look little more than riverine rapids with quite modest drops. With the Macquarie in flood, Namina surprised me by appearing to fall upwards by the same distance it normally descends - no doubt because of the quantity of water passing over the fall, and the sudden change in trajectory as the water hit rocks below. 

There are great violence in the water - reminding me of the old stories shared by the Wiradjuri and settlers of a first meeting here on the banks of the river, and a romance that ensured.