Wilsons Creek

Natural geographical features of the locality

One of the main features of the site was the creek ….. it was a series of large pools up to fifty metres across, rapids and boulders edged by glass clear waters with darker shadows streaked with lighter translucent sun shafts falling through the edging trees in lighter colours. Water from the top rapids flowed into the first main pool which was our swimming pool which then flowed over tan-coloured rock shelves …… to flow into a deeper dark green pool below which was a much longer pool.

In these pools we went fishing and swimming as kids:

Left hand side of the creek: Was where we entered the water ….. the bank sloped down to soft tan – brown river gravel then into shallow water …… this was where the creek flowed slowly around the outside southern edge of the pool … sand and gravel partly covered by organic matter ….. fallen leaves are 200 – 300 mm deep … water is 500 mm deep here ….. whenever you walk here, it releases clouds of gas bubbles ….. one day in the early 1960’s with my chemistry set and books, I leant this was marsh gas or methane gas which was being released from the decomposing leaves …. The gas was trapped in the gravel and mud and was released when the surface of the gravel was broken.

I caught some of this gas in an inverted waterfilled glass jar where the bubbles arose and displaced the water ….. I put a lid on the jar and took it back to my chemistry set ….. I lit the gas and it burned with a slow blue flame like methylated spirits ….. so I knew it methane being released from the decomposing leaves.

Floods and cyclones: which came nearly every year in the 1950’s, 1960’s and early 1970’s ….. swirling air would form into a low pressure system over a whole region and would initially gather up in the Coral Sea up north …… forming into a rain depression or cyclone which would rotate clockwise to pass moisture laden air onto the coast from off the sea …… then it moved progressively down the coast to cross our section of the coast in the eye of the cyclone …. This meant the eye of the cyclone was only moving dry air off the land into itself which swirled around to become moisture laden air directed onto the coast from off the sea …. then the eye had crossed over that was the end of the cyclone.

When I was home in the 1950’s and the 1960’s I remember some of these things:

• How the rain and wind lashed around the eaves


• How I often played dams and paddle wheels made out of empty wooden cotton reels in the grass drain which cut across the hill behind the shed


• The tossing waves of the swollen creek


• The flying fox over the creek at the engine room to get to Mullumbimby High School (1961 - 1967)
• Dad put in two stout posts on either side of the creek with a double banana wire between them ….. the whole family would jump on separate pulleys and pull ourselves across to the other side ….. Each pulley had a short rope and thick stick between your legs … I remember my feet barely a metre off the tossing brown water as I pulled myself over on the pulley,…. I walked with my two of my brothers up to Wilsons Creek Rd. to catch the High School bus into Mullumbimby ….. then doing the same in the afternoon after school.
  
  When a cyclone was coming down the coast and creek had come up, the flying fox enabled us freedom of movement in a cyclone …... Dad would drive the vehicle across to the other side of the creek and leave it there …... We could always go as a family into town or church when the weather was bad and creek was up.

We would hear on the radio the progression of the cyclone down the coast and when it was expected to cross our section of coast. The creek would be transformed overnight into a huge tossing and surging sea of muddy water filling the whole creek to a depth of ten to twenty metres …… the rain just poured down day after day till the eye of the cyclone passed on and out to sea.

When the rain had stopped, we would troop as a family down the creek to see how high the creek came up in the middle of the night as invariably the eye of the cyclone had passed over in the middle of the night ….. it could come up around ten to twenty metres in height. We would then often go down the engine room to see if the flood waters had come up anywhere near the engine room at the crossing …. It had been very high if had come up to there.

Description of the creek: our section of the creek consisted alternating variations in the creek:

• The top pool which was our swimming hole as it had a gravelly sloping bottom going over to a two metre deep rocky bottom with a 250 mm underwater rock we could all swim to. The pool was about 30 metres across by 75 metres long
• Then a narrow constricted passage which glided over a 300 mm deep rock shelf top flow into a lower large pool … about 75 metres across by 200 metres long
• Then there was a series of large bouldery rapids for another 200 metres
• Then there was Pool 3= Lower Pool. It was about 50 metres across by 75 metres long …… we rarely swam in here as there was not a good entry to the pool plus it was an uneven depth that was green and mysterious. I only fished here as it was good for catfish.
• Then there was a series of large bouldery rapids again for another 200 metres down the concrete creek crossing which Dad built in the early 1960’s
  
  For me I was constantly exploring right down and above our section of creek. Virtually every tree grove, pool and boulder has some memory for me. I was out at the old property meeting the new people in 2001 and 2006 as the farm had been sold in 1995.
  
  Pool 1: The top pool ran from a sloping gravelly bottom on the left hand side of the creek and sloped over to a 1.50 metre high rocky boulder wall. This then fell a further two metres to a rocky bottom below. A 250 mm deep underwater rock shelf projected out from this wall. The photograph above shows the surrounding rainforest trees.
  ubmerged Boulders
  
  Pool 1: Photograph above shows the 1.50 metre high rocky boulder wall on the far side of the pool. This wall sloped down two metres to a rocky bottom with a 250 mm underwater rock shelf we swam to.
  
  The series of large bouldery rapids from Pool 3 for 200 metres down the concrete creek crossing which Dad built in the early 1960’.
  
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  Personal Experiences of the locality:
  

• Flying Fox Wire across Pool 1 as well … was for getting to the house if the creek was in flood ….. one day Dad and Gerald coming down a pulley and just missing the floodwaters. See the photograph of Helene Aitken (nee Jenkins) before she married Gerald Aitken, my brother in 1973. ….. going over on the wire in a flooded creek time at the swimming pool
• The other flying fox wire was right down the creek further at the crossing and engine room area of the creek.
• Swimming in the creek: as a family at the end of hot summer days ..… we used to leave our wet clothes to dry on the clumps of reeds ….. swimming with my brothers in our later years in Pool 1.

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