We’re dry

There’s been a LOT of rain.

I’ve had questions from all over, wanting to make sure we’re OK, and we are. Knowing the local weather, when we moved here we chose a solid brick and tile house, at the top of a hill, and we’re safe and warm inside, even if the sloping back yard is a soggy quagmire and the water running down the brick path is ankle deep. We emptied our 7,000 litre/1,800 gallon garden rainwater tank earlier, so we could flush it. It took less than 24 hours to completely refill with the runoff from our 5m x 10m/16ft x 32ft shed roof.

The chooks are Not Happy, but there’s not much I can do for them. They have a tarp stretched over their yard and another over their tractor if we deem it dry enough on the grass to let them out in it. They have a warm, dry chook house filled with wood shavings and plenty of grain in the feeder.

Mouse is happy lounging about in the house until he needs to go outside, and then there is severe Princess Syndrome. If I make him wear his raincoat, only his paws and tail-tip get wet, especially if I put his hood up, but he sulks and trudges. If I don’t, he gets very wet, he tows me along at speed, shakes himself off on me at regular intervals and demands a towel-off when we get home. Lots of side-eye…

So far, the main road into town is still open. One end of a local through-road is closed where it dips down to cross the creek. It’s at least a metre under water. The main creek crossing on the highway is about 30cm below the bottom of the bridge, and rising. Low lying land in the area is under water. A small town northwest of us received 357mm/14 inches of rain in 24 hours and is currently cut off. Many roads are closed, including the No. 1 Highway north and south of here. Which means that supplies are not getting through to supermarkets and shelves are emptying.

All that said, and despite ongoing Bureau of Meteorology warnings and hourly phone alerts, the weather is  s l o w l y  moving away. By tomorrow afternoon, the worst of it will be over, the flood warnings will revert to Falling instead of Rising or Steady, and roads will slowly reopen. It’ll take a while for the supply chain to come back up to speed, but I didn’t wash in on the last tide, and my pantry is well stocked. The worst of it is the plethora of wet dog towels, and trying to dry laundry. I can normally expect wet washing to be dry within a couple of hours tops. Some of it has been on the line in the laundry for the last two days and I’m having to bend to the inevitable and use the drier. Once dry and folded it has to come into the rest of the house where the air conditioning will keep it dry rather than getting damp all over again. But seriously, if that’s the worst of my problems, I have much to be grateful for.

Give it another 24 hours and for us, the worst will be over.