Closed: Macquarie Park, Windsor bridge pedestrian access, Grose Vale Rd section near Kurrajong

A quick round-up of some flood-affected areas and how the recovery efforts are going across the Hawkesbury.

Windsor’s Macquarie Park will be closed for some time because of flood damage.

Council’s Director Infrastructure Services, Jeff Organ, tell us, “many of our riverside parks and low lying areas have been affected by the flood and Macquarie Park will remain closed until it is clean, safe and functional again. We will need to reconnect power, sewer and ensure the area is safe and useable.

“There is vegetation that needs to be removed,” which mostly means damaged and downed trees.

There is no time-line for reopening the park, with Mr Organ saying that is “too difficult to estimate…but we are deploying all available resources to fix Hawkesbury infrastructure”.

Windsor Bridge is closed to pedestrians, with one of the two signs there saying Macquarie Park is closed too. What is interesting is a Georgiou worker – not Council – put the signs up. Council tells us “Council is not responsible for Windsor Bridge so please contact TfNSW about this”.

Which we did. TfNSW fields any questions about the new $137m bridge, despite the bridge not actually belonging to TfNSW at the moment. The government department are clients of Georgiou, the bridge’s builders. The bridge is not deemed completed yet – earthworks either end are still being worked on – so it has not been officially handed over to the NSW government.

TfNSW told us the bridge is closed to pedestrians as Transport for NSW crews clean up and remove debris following the floods.

“It will re-open when the bridge and surrounding areas can be deemed safe after this work is completed,” a TfNSW spokesperson told us.

What does appear to be happening – which is dangerous – is some pedestrians like the person pictured below by Paul Caleo on Thursday, are walking on the bridge roadway around the signs and then hopping back over the barrier onto the pathway. It is hard to see what alternative they have though if they need to get to the other side of the river and do not have a vehicle.

Also with no time-line for reopening is Grose Vale Road between the junctions of Westbury Road and Bowen Mountain Road.

This winding section of highway has been closed for around two weeks now and is the most direct route from Kurrajong to Grose Vale, though there is a work-around using Westbury and Bowen Mountain Rds.

Here are some pictures taken yesterday. It is a mess, with at least two landslips partly cleared, damage to a roadside barrier caused by a falling tree, and one tree still blocking the road completely.

We haven’t seen any workers there and Council have not come back to us yet with any more details.

Meanwhile, in Ebenezer yesterday a couple of our readers – Pam and Nina – took some pictures you can see here of the amount of flood damaged property on the roadsides for collecting.

Clearly there is a lot of work still to be done getting the Hawkesbury back to normal, but Council-provided skip bins are appearing in most streets and areas affected by the floods.

Let us know what’s happening in your area and we’ll add that to the overall picture.

Main pic – courtesy of Paul Caleo

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