Tim The Yowie Man explores the ruins of the Currandooley Estate

The story of a family's survival during historic floods on the eastern side of Lake George.

Transcript

00:00 While many of us are familiar with the western shores of Lake George,

00:04 where every day thousands of vehicles travel along the busy Federal Highway,

00:09 what lies on the eastern shores?

00:12 What's over there?

00:14 There are, of course, those wind turbines, a quarry, a sand mine, and lots of farmland.

00:22 But there are also the crumbling ruins of the first Currandoolie stone homestead,

00:27 the place of an extraordinary tale of survival on a stormy night back in April 1870.

00:35 During the week, I caught up with Harry Osborne,

00:40 a direct descendant of the family living in that historic home on that fateful night.

00:50 They'd only been here a year or two when big rains of the late 1860s, early 1870s

00:57 forced the family out on a couple of occasions.

01:00 The last time they left here was in a boat,

01:03 and they rode or sailed round to Torello, which is about three or four kays to the south-west.

01:12 Virtually the entire 16,000 acres was underwater by the time that they left.

01:18 And so if you'd just bought a property a couple of years earlier

01:22 and under the auspice of it being naturally clear and great bird hunting and all that sort of stuff,

01:30 then you'd probably be a little bit disappointed when it all disappeared,

01:34 below the waves and you hadn't built an ark.

01:37 [Music]

02:04 [BLANK_AUDIO]