1909 Western Victorian floods

Persistent above-average rainfall began to affect most of Victoria apart from eastern Gippsland in April 1909 as a result of strong southern low-pressure systems interacting with moisture in the Indian Ocean.

[3] The third of four major depressions for the month arrived in western Victoria on the 17th and produced very heavy falls upon already-saturated catchments on flat land where water was not draining away quickly.

[6] In Donald itself, not only roads, but even footpaths were devastated as the Richardson River flooded the town to a level never seen before or since, eventually reaching normally-dry Lake Buloke.

Unusually for floods in Australia, not only did the rivers recede rapidly but the excessively wet conditions of the autumn and winter that produced them gave way to much drier weather from September onwards so that a repeat was never remotely possible.

Flooding during August 1909 also happened in South Australia, the northeast of Victoria and more northerly parts of the Murray-Darling Basin; however, these were not as unusual as those in the Wimmera and Western District.