As the people whose houses were swallowed by the Maribyrnong River dragged their ruined belongings into the street this week, until the piles of junk towered overhead, marquees were being erected downstream at Flemington racecourse.
The track, an emerald polished to a spectacular green, was saved by a 2.5-metre high flood wall, only days before the start of Australia’s premier racing carnival.
But did this wall, built by the Victorian Racing Club in 2007, also contribute to the inundation of 245 properties? In stopping water from resting on part of the river’s natural flood plain, did the wall make the Maribyrnong’s worst flood in almost 50 years even more devastating?
The family of one of the wall’s biggest opponents are unequivocal: “If that wall wasn’t there, it wouldn’t have come in the house,” Tyson Trewin told the Seven Network.
“The water has gone way, way further than it normally would, so I definitely think it has impacted,” his mother, Jane, said.
Shane Trewin, Tyson’s father and Jane’s husband, led a losing battle on behalf of residents against the wall’s construction almost two decades ago. He died in 2019.
Engineer Geoff Crapper met the Trewins during the battle against the wall, back in the early 2000s.
At the time, he had been a Melbourne Water employee for more than three decades, and was one of several experts who questioned the flood modelling relied upon by the authority to approve the wall.
In July 2003, he sent a report to his employers which said the hydrology modelling used to assess the flood wall did not have a “sound basis”.
He made five recommendations, including that the modelling be independently reviewed. Ultimately it was, but Melbourne Water still approved the wall.
Crapper says even the most accurate modelling would not have been able to predict exactly how the flood wall shifted the Maribyrnong’s flow.
He says this is what makes the investigation into the flood so critical: it will be the only way to determine what happened.
Investigators, he says, should be going into every house that flooded to determine the level the water reached, starting from Chifley Drive in the north, then moving downstream to measure levels at the wall itself, through the Kensington Banks estate, parts of which were also flooded, and at other markers as far down as Footscray Road.
Crapper reckons it is not just the flood wall that must be examined.
The hydrology and flood warning specialist says it appears warning systems failed, leaving residents in Maribyrnong with little time to flee, and there should be a serious discussion about whether the river should be dammed upstream at Arundel, as he first proposed in 1976.
Then there’s the matter of a retirement village, built upstream in the suburb of Avondale Heights, having 46 units flooded. It was constructed after the wall.
None of the village’s homes had been built on a designated flood plain, and the developer had approval from Melbourne Water. So why, Crapper asks, did they flood? All developments are supposed to be built above a one-in-100-year flood level, which is 27cm higher than the peak of 4.18m recorded on 14 October.
Flood wall investigation
The investigation into the flood wall has been widely criticised before it has started, given it will be conducted by Melbourne Water.
The Victoria government-owned statutory authority not only approved the wall’s construction, but its chairman, John Thwaites, was the water minister and deputy premier when the Labor government approved it in 2004.
Also in that government was Daniel Andrews, now the premier, who was steadfast in maintaining this week that the investigation would be independent.
“I think Melbourne Water can conduct the review,” Andrews told reporters at the state control centre on Monday.
“Let’s wait and see what that review says. I’ve got confidence in them and we’ll get those reports back and we can make assessments at that point.”
Thwaites has excused himself from any involvement in the review to avoid any potential or perceived conflicts of interest.
That does little to comfort Ted Baillieu, the former Liberal premier who was shadow planning minister when the wall was approved.
Baillieu and Shane Trewin made strange bedfellows – Baillieu, an architect representing the seat of Hawthorn in Melbourne’s old-moneyed inner east, and Trewin, fighting on behalf of the mostly working-class residents in the rusted-on Labor heartland of the inner west.
But they were united in their belief that the planning case for the wall did not stack up.
“There needs to be an independent inquiry, and it can’t be Melbourne Water,” Baillieu tells Guardian Australia.
“John Thwaites was intimately involved at the time, he clearly had an influence on the [then] planning minister Mary Delahunty.
“Melbourne Water would effectively be investigating the decisions of their own chairman, and with all due respects to John, that’s clearly a conflict of interest.”
A condition of the planning permit issued to the Victorian Racing Club was that the wall would not cause further flooding, Baillieu says.
Should the investigation find that it did, the government and racing club could be sued by property owners. Carbone Lawyers is reportedly considering a class action on their behalf, but the firm did not respond to Guardian Australia.
Free pass
The wall did not just protect the VRC from flooding: after it was constructed, the VRC applied for an amendment to the planning scheme, that was granted by the City of Melbourne in 2009, which meant it no longer required a permit for certain buildings and works “to ensure that the racecourse’s ongoing development is not inhibited by unnecessary … applications and referrals to Melbourne Water”.
Melbourne Water had no objection to the amendment, saying, according to council documents, it was satisfied the wall and other mitigation works against a one-in-100-year flood had negated the need for such assessments.
The wall, in effect, gave the VRC a free pass from having to undergo the standard approvals required of other developers along the Maribyrnong.
Andrew Jones, the chief executive of Racing Victoria, said the day after the flood that the wall had been designed to protect the spring racing carnival, a “massively important part of Victorian life and the Victorian economy”. In the next fortnight, Flemington will host its biggest race days: the Melbourne Cup, Derby Day, Stakes Day, and Oaks Day.
“The VRC took steps to flood-protect its property 15 years ago, which it’s entitled to do, [and] that’s obviously had unintended consequences for neighbouring residents,” he told Channel Nine.
Baillieu says these consequences have been so grave that the inquiry had to consider who, if anyone, was ultimately accountable.
“The consequence of these floods has been disastrous for a lot of individuals, and a lot of businesses.
“That leads to legitimate questions about responsibility and accountability.”
