I came to Albury in 1946 and as a boy remember riding my bike along Wodonga Place with the flood water half way up the bike frame and watching the staff at the Adelyn clothing factory (now the Flying Fruit Fly premises) being taken to and from work by boat.

I trained as a surveyor in Albury and returned as Council's surveyor in 1974. That year there was a rare January river flood which coincided with heavy rain in the upper catchment of Bungambrawatha Creek, causing flood waters to flow through the Botanic Gardens and along Wodonga Place. Council then embarked on a program to improve drainage and flood protection throughout the city.

The Hume Dam was built primary for irrigation storage, although in more recent years some degree of manipulation of levels and discharges has been used to control river flooding, sometimes successfully, sometimes not.

One of my first tasks was to establish interconnected flood gauges along the river and other flood risk areas in order to determine the flow pattern when next a flood occurred. None too soon, as October 1974 turned out to be a ‘big one’ which flooded much of South Albury.

Many locals thought that they probably would not see another flood of that magnitude in their lifetime however  October 1975 was a bigger one, close to the predicted 1 in 100 year event. Fortunately most of the flood prone areas of South Albury were now protected by a levee system.

The biggest risk to towns protected by levee systems and relying on pumps to clear stormwater, is heavy rain over the town area or in catchments which flow through the town. This creates more runoff than the pumping systems can handle with flooding inside the levees. The point of this is that this year has been very similar to 1974 with a wet winter and almost full weir early in the season.

The floods of 1974 and 1975 both  occurred in late October, so, with further heavy rains forecast don't hang up the gumboots yet.

I write regarding Joan Fairbridge's letter (The Border Mail, ‘Swamping Australia’). I have never read so much rubbish. Just to try and prove a point, Joan Fairbridge stated that if it was not for Afghan Muslims we would still be living in Sydney.

All these facts are about as genuine as a $7 note.

Blaxland, Wentworth, Lawson first crossed the Blue Mountains, then came Evans who explored the Liverpool Plains, and then the Hunter River area.

Later there came a host of explorers charting Australia such as Hume and Hovell, Sturt, Eyre, Stuart, Mitchell, Oxley, Kennedy, Forest, Burke and Wills, Leichardt, Cunningham, McMillan, where are all the supposed Afghan Muslims Joan Fairbridge wrote about?

Pauline Hanson quoted we are being swamped by certain nationalities because we are. Try getting the figures on the immigration in the last 30 years and it will give you the answer, we are being flooded.

Joan Fairbridge also stated that some of us stopped some real boats, we didn't. It was the Americans that stopped Japan ever reaching Australia, in the Battle of the Coral Sea.

Let's get our facts right before we try and have a go at good politicians like Pauline Hanson.

Enough is enough.