Sydney Morning Herald: GRAFTON narrowly escaped a major flood this week to the reported delight of the NSW Premier, Barry O'Farrell, and no doubt the town's 18,000 or so residents.
The northern New South Wales town averted disaster thanks to an 8.1 metre levee which held - just. The Clarence River, swollen by rain from the powerful remnants of ex-tropical cyclone Oswald, rose to 8.08 metres.
''It was very close,'' Scott Greensill, the general manager for the Clarence Valley shire, said. The river ''was the highest...