1959 floods at Wyndang

[Jennison]

The mother of a friend of mine gave me five b/w photos from their 1959 VV holiday at Wyndang (which I believe is sth of Wollongong).
There was heavy rain/flooding and they were awoken during the night and forced to evacuate the van park. I have forwarded them to Donricardo and he should post them shortly on my behalf (thanks donricardo) there are a few different makes of VV for our expert VV identifiers to name. My friends VV was the little one next to the FC- it looks a bit like the Nowra van of Malcombs that was next to me at Coledale this year. Their towcar was the A50.
regards Jennison

[Don Ricardo]

Posted on behalf of Jennison as per post above:

[Franklin1]

Jennison, those photos bring back some fond (?) memories of the 1960s for me

Firstly, just to correct the name of the town, it is Windang, on the eastern shore of Lake Illawarra. There were five caravan parks along the side of the lake back in those days, and the caravan park my parents built out of virgin bushland was the last of the five, being completed in about 1960 when I was 9 years old. My father had a dream of building the park, and then adding a motel at the front, but unfortunately he died in an accident in 1964 and the motel dream was never realised.
However, my family did spend about 5 years in the park until we had to sell it as part of winding up Dad's estate, and during those 5 years we probably had about four significant floods. The entrance to Lake Illawarra always had problems with shifting sands blocking the mouth, and so excess rainwater never had anywhere to go. Our "rough and ready" concrete block residence in the Park had marks drawn on the inside wall every time a flood occurred to show how high the water rose and the date of the flood. I well remember the nights during those five years that vans had to be moved to higher ground (not that there was much higher ground) to get them out of the water as much as possible. Bear in mind that in those days, many of the vans were left there and used at weekends or holidays, so often when the floods occurred during winter, the owners were back at home snug in their own beds. I remember sometime in the early '60s that one of the permanent residents went 'upmarket' and built a new annex with a timber frame on a pallet floor and the canvas stretched over the frame. Did away with all the ropes and clips, and just had the annex butted up to the side of the van. In one of the floods, the annex ended up floating away! (at least it was above water... )

So yeah, you've triggered some memories there...

By the way, four of the five caravan parks have now been converted to those manufactured homes/kit homes type of parks, such is the changing face of caravan parks these days.

Thanks for the trip down memory lane...
cheers,
Al.

[Jennison]

What a good coincidence Franklin PS I haven,t forgotten that paper- I will copy and send it regards Jeff