Yesterday (12th January) heavy rains wash large amounts of topsoil down Mansfield Street and into Chinaman's Creek.
As the rest of Cairns was inundated yesterday, the torrential rain caused havoc on the Lavis property. This end of town received very heavy falls and the run off came surging down the main access road and into Mansfield Street. Once into Mansfield Street the silt then ran down the gutters and into the storm water drains, ultimately ending up in Chinaman's Creek!
As we had no access to the property we can only assume it came from the bottom straight stretch of roadway. However it was very heavily contaminated with red silt which seems to have come from erosion of the unretained walls of the cuttings and from the road pushed through from the main property to an ajoining one owned by a member of the Lavis Family.
The roadway further up the hill runs down to Chinaman's Creek and there is no conceivable way a similar deluge would not have happened into the creek at higher level.
If the development goes through, a new house pad, an extension of the roadway up to the new house and any bared ground in the future will be similarly eroded. That will all contribute to further erosion and more water running down the road way and down the slopes into the rain forest, creek and street.
