Mystery road uncovered in Evans River

It’s been nearly six months since the flood that devastated parts of the Northern Rivers and it keeps on giving.

With the volumes of water that descended on the town of Woodburn, a fair chunk of that flowed through the Tuckombil Canal and into Evans River, creating a turbulent force that washed away tonnes of sand, changing the whole bottom structure of the water course.

Thanks to the eagle eyes of two local jet-skiiers, Brody Aleckson and Mick McGillivray, the river has been forced to offer up some of its mysteries.

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“Mick got a rock jammed in his jet-ski up the river,” said Brody,a  local real estate agent.

“He went to pull the rock out and realised there were all these other rocks in a big line.

“We knew something was going on here.”

The men came back the next day at low tide and flew their drone over the area.

The pictures and videos that came back to them show two parallel lines of large rocks stretching from one sand bank to where the river goes deep again.

“We don’t know if (the structure) continues, as sand still covers that last bit,” said Brody.

Despite growing up in the area Brody had never seen the structure before and after asking a few long term residents with more than 70 years of knowledge, he still had no answers.

Evans Head historian Lil Colless said there had been a footbridge in that area back in the 1880s used during the gold-mining days.

“There was a footbridge which could have been built by the Chinese,” she said.

“There were about 200 or more here in the 1800s.

“The river has sanded up so much since those days.”

A reference in a local history book referring to a crossing, matches with an historical map showing a crossing near where the drone photos were taken.

There is the possibility it is the remains of oyster leases that were established in the river many years ago, but nothing is definitive.

If you have some knowledge at what the mystery structure could be, please contact The Northern Rivers Times so we can investigate further.