Slip rumbles through lounge: 'It looked like driveway was moving'

Saturday, 20 August 2022

Coster St resident Chris Scott, and contractor Murray Dowie check the conditions of slips at the back of properties in the Enner Glynn.

“I haven’t had much sleep, I don’t know what I’m running on,” said Annie Whall, who shovelled until midnight to help keep her shared driveway clear.

Two hours before a slip crashed through his house, David Pattinson had been sitting in the lounge having a cup of tea.

“I had grabbed my caged bird and a packed bag, and sat and had a cup of tea. Two hours later this stuff was in my lounge.”

The slip, which came down from a sloping property above a shared driveway on Nelson’s Coster St, happened late Thursday. The debris crashed through Pattinson’s house, shifting the building on its foundations and filling his lounge and kitchen with mud.

A digger operator, clearing debris from an earlier slip, later told Pattinson the event sounded “like the house was screaming”, he said.

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David Pattinson can’t get into his home: thick, “dangerous” mud surrounds it and fills it. Two hours before the slip hit the property, Pattinson was inside having a cup of tea.

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The house is red-stickered, and Pattinson can’t get inside to get any of his belongings.

Michelle Hunt: “I said, ‘Mitchell, quick get your gumboots, go and tell them to get out’.

“These things always seem to happen to somebody else, you see it on the news, and you think it won’t happen to you.”

Michelle Hunt, whose balcony overlooks the shared driveway, had watched helplessly as the land began to slip towards Pattinson’s home.

Chris Scott attempts to clear a drain on the shared driveway.

“The sludge was flowing down, it looked like the driveway was moving.”

At the time, there was a digger and a group of people working at the top of the driveway. Hunt wasn’t sure whether they had seen the moving debris, so she called to her son.

“I said, ‘Mitchell, quick get your gumboots, go and tell them to get out’.”

As the rain came down on Friday night, Annie and Terry Whall, Pattinson’s neighbours further down the driveway, picked up shovels and headed out into the dark.

Mud from was trickling down the driveway, Annie said. Their neighbours – seven other households, including Pattinson’s – had already evacuated, so they worked alone.

Together, they tried to shift enough mud to help direct the flow of water.

Just before midnight, they gave up. “It started to piss down: abandon ship,' Annie said.

Between 4am and 6am, land from the section above slipped down the driveway in a slow, sludgy rumble.

It was hard to watch, Annie said. After the slip on Thursday, residents and a digger had worked to clear the worst of the mess on Friday. Now they were back to square one.

“I haven’t had much sleep, I don’t know what I’m running on,” Annie said.

Along the driveway, residents are pitching in with shovels and stopping to compare notes and there’s a sense of a community pulling together.

Annie said plenty of people had offered help: she was waiting on a promised delivery of muffins, she said.

'I told them, 'I wouldn't say no'; I haven't had time to bake muffins.'