Hunt Rd follows a normally placid tributary to Bowlers Creek, which in turn flows alongside State Highway 8 for 5km into Lawrence.
But that all changed during yesterday's violent storm.
Golf-ball sized hailstones pelted properties amid peels of thunder, as a tidal-wave of rainfall up to a metre deep swept down the valley, washing away stock and destroying fences to leave heaps of slash and debris against concrete culverts and mangled steel gates.
‘‘In 34 years we’ve never seen anything like it,’’ resident farmer Roger Cotton said.
‘‘You could hear the roar from up here, and we just watched this front of water almost the width of the valley floor rolling down to the main road.’’
‘High on the ridge overlooking Hunt Rd, Mr Cotton’s home was safe, but he spent much of the night patrolling much of his 1200 hectares, moving stock and checking infrastructure.
‘I’ve seen about seven drowned sheep, and a lot of the pipes that supply stock drinking water have been broken . . .
"The animals seek high ground and shelter but you’ve got to make sure they can access it . . . and they wouldn’t have liked the hail very much.’’
In the morning drizzle, the creek level looked normal, but the surrounding flats were a ruin of freshly gouged land-slips, drifts of timber and leaves, and flattened hay pasture.
‘‘I don’t know if the feed grass will recover,’’ Lawrence contractor Eddie Fitzgerald said.
‘‘And the stored baleage that was washed away will all have to found and wrapped again.
‘‘This is a serious wake-up call for being properly flood prepared.
"Just imagine if this was a built up area - if there had been houses in the path of all that.’’
