25 January 2021
22 January 2021
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Retired police officer Blen McInnes at the Woden Floods Memorial this week, a place he regards as a sacred site. Photo: Thomas Lucraft.
Fifty years on from a one-in-100-year flood at Woden in which seven people drowned, former police officer Blen McInnes still gets goosebumps remembering the night he describes as “bedlam”.
Mr McInnes, now 75, recalls the torrent of water that stretched from Hughes to Curtin as almost 100 mm of rain fell in less than an hour. Blocked drains turned roadways into rivers.
Mona and Ben Smith of Lyons lost three children, Carmel, 19, Margaret, 15, and Michael, 6. In the same car, their cousins Jennifer, 12, and Dianne Seymour, 8, from Wangaratta, also drowned. Eighteen-year-old Lon Cumberland and 20-year-old Roderick Simon also died in the tragedy.
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