Bridge over troubled water

One good thing about the rain (and yes, its raining again today) is that Sullivan's creek (or "Sulli's" in Ye Olde Boganish), which runs through the ANU campus, actually starts to look like a proper river. Typically, the river is quite shallow and doesn't really flow. The water just kind of sits there, festering away, no doubt making it the perfect breeding ground for some sort of flesh eating bacteria. As far as I can tell, it is really just a glorified open drain, but with lots of ducks.

The creek, however harmless it may seem, is apparently not to be messed with. Today at lunch, I was told about a drunk ANU student who drowned in the creek about 15 years ago. It was a day, not unlike today, when the rain was coming down. This guy decided to jump in the river and go for a bit of a ride (on some sort of floating device I assume) down the fast flowing water. What he obviously didn't count on was the small footbridge, normally perched about 2 meters above the water level, being on this occassion, only a couple of centimeters above the water. Well, the rest of the story, as they say, is history.

The moral of the story:

never under estimate a drunk undergraduate's ability to find danger in seemingly harmless places.

... and perhaps a mental note for future campus designs:

don't put the student bar next to the campus river.