Of droughts and flooding rains

So it has been a wild, wild week over here at Betsy's. Let me set the scene. The prolonged six weeks of school holidays are coming to an end. The children have completely had enough of each other. But it is all ok as we have a weekend full of outdoor activities planned for that final few days. And then an ex tropical cyclone, hysterically called Oswald, moves right in. And it rains and rains and rains,  and we try and make the best of it.

Of course that means we have to throw on our swimmers and enjoy our long long driveway with some scootering in the rain.

And we ferret out every last vestige of crafty indoor activities that can be found at the end of an excessively long holiday.

And we collapse in front of the original Disney version of Snow White  and in those scary scenes the howling wind makes us dive under the pillows.

When the power goes out we are thankful that we were prepared and had shopped for batteries and torches. We are relieved that Betsy sits high on a hill and is not at risk of flood. We worry for friends who are not so high on a hill. When the rain clears on that last day, we know exactly what needs to be done, on this Australia Day holiday. We come together with our neighbours, some we have never met before, and we clear fallen trees and debris. Just like two years before, we come together in adversity.

Legoman gets to play chainsaws all afternoon and I get to chat with some lovely women that on a normal day I might only wave at  and say hello. We had no power for two days, Brisbane escaped with much less flooding than anticipated, our friends who were flooded two years ago were spared. Sadly many huge old trees lie fallen, uprooted, in our suburb. The first  picture is the one that took out the power lines to our street.

 Our thoughts go out to all those people in regional queensland who are not sleeping in their own beds tonight, whose possessions are submerged under layers of filthy water and mud. I hope they are all discovering their neighbours and the human goodness that can follow a disaster.

While feeling intense gratitude for our safe,dry house this week we have also packed up the Esky, thrown out all the spoiled food in our freezer, gone back to work, gone back to school and Liongirl has started her first day at four year old kindy. It has been a BIG week.  It seems that January is never dull where the weather is concerned, one minute bush fires, the next floods. This poem sums it all up really.

I love a sunburnt country
A land of sweeping plains
Of ragged mountain ranges
Of droughts and flooding rains
I love her far horizons
I love her jewel sea
Her beauty and her terror
The wide brown land for me.

Dorothea Mackellar, written in 1904. There are six wonderful verses to this poem,  that despite being over one hundred years old, still resonates clearly today.