Around Chinchilla
The Condamine River is flowing over the Chinchilla Weir 5kms out of town. It has reached the 6m mark on the gauge and is an impressive sight. It is forecast to reach 8m by Tuesday in two days time.
Chinchilla has suffered several floods when Charley's Creek rises. This is the post office in the 2010-2011 flood and as it was today. On 28 December 2010 the water level at Chinchilla Weir topped 15m.
Despite this history of repeated flooding Chinchilla appears to be a prosperous town with many community facilities such as a water park, 700 seat cultural centre, and major road improvements. Many of the out of town workers are employed by QCG, a Shell company "producing" natural gas in the Surat Basin - presumably this means collecting the gas by fracking. Just down the road there is accommodation for 1,000 workers in Stayover so the town is benefiting from the presence of this large workforce.
Tilly finally slept through the night. Today I kept her outside as much as possible so she will be exhausted tonight. I was able to let her and Blue have a run in an open area in the caravan park.
The camera in the background of this photo lets me see a thermometer on the opposite wall from my mobile phone. The camera is connected to the wifi in the Bushtracker. This lets us check the temperature in the van when we leave the critters in there alone. I always worry the power might fail and stop the air conditioning with our fur kids inside. The wifi and camera both operate directly from our lithium batteries.