Perth’s heavy recent rainfall has certainly had an impact on the Canning River, according to Armadale Gosnells Landcare Group senior landcare officer Shane Hunter.
The torrential downpours of last week caused the river to break its banks to the extent that it created new channels on previously dry land the group were planning to revegetate.
Mr Hunter said that although the river levels would drop quickly, the prospect of more rain on the horizon meant the group would have to postpone their revegetation efforts.
“Yeah, at the moment they’re pretty high. In a lot of places, I haven’t seen it get this high,” he said.
“I went out on Monday to check the sites and it’s still up really high, about to the peak I saw it last week.
“When I was out last week, I went back out on the Friday and it had dropped by half-a-metre to a metre compared to the Tuesday.
It drops pretty quickly when it stops raining, so if we didn’t have any more significant rainfall, it would probably drop to its normal levels in about a week if not a few days.”
While he said the flooding wouldn’t have a hugely damaging impact, it still may cause difficulties for seedlings already planted by the group.
“If anything, spreading water out along the floodplain is a good thing to flush some of the deeper pools within the river itself and also get a bit more water out into the surrounding floodplain area.
“Some of the immediate effects, it may damage some of the fringing vegetation and any of the little seedlings we’ve planted, if they’re stuck under water for a significant amount of time then that doesn’t do them too much good.
“A lot of the plants we plant in those areas are pretty tolerant to flooding so as long as the water drops after maybe a week or so most of the plants should be fairly okay.”
While the focus of the Perth kayaking community may now be on the Avon Descent, Mr Hunter said the Canning River may present the perfect, more relaxed opportunity.
“I was thinking about kayaking myself, actually, if you’re going to go kayaking about now would be nice, especially if you’re going downstream, you’d get a nice little push.”
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