One of the joys of bush living are the unexpected challenges that arise from time to time. You have to think of life in the outback that way otherwise at times you’d probably go stir crazy. Who would have thought for instance that last weeks weather band would have developed into a frog fest following 229 mm of rain. That’s quite a lot of precipitation, over 9” s in the old scale. When you consider that our average annual rainfall is 24″ you can imagine how water-logged it is in our part of the world at the moment. Our access road (below) is flooded with local water which has rendered us house bound. We can flog around in the mud however with the plumbing also choked up with water the clothes washing machine is out of action for a day or so. Personally I don’t mind a touch of rain. You can’t do much of the growing kind whether crops or livestock without it and ten years of drought makes those of us rurally inclined pretty happy to see a spot of liquid gold. 

The difficulty arrives when choked water ways break banks and spill out over the surrounding countryside. This wonderful low lying area where I live is quite frankly impossible to get in or out of when the Boomi River starts gurgling past. And it does gurgle.  Throw in a couple of days of warm weather and the stench of rotting grass permeates everything. And of course don’t forget the mozzies. Our variety, the kamikaze fighter mozzie has the potential to lift men from quad bikes in flood water at dusk. In a couple of days however we are expecting a run down the MacIntyre River from Goondiwindi. This system flows into the Boomi River and past my window; luckily there is a levee bank inbetween. The lead of that water will probably reach us thursday making wednesday night the last ‘window’ to get in or out (we hope tuesday through wednesday will see a drop between runs). So it looks like there is every possibility I’ll be decamping over to the main homestead, a situation reminiscent of January this year when I enjoyed mum’s cooking for nearly a month. The difference this time is that we are expecting a lot more water over on our grazing and farming country compared to January. And we had approximately 8,000 acres under then. So while David stays behind with the cotton within the levee bank I’ll be heading home to do the Whalan Creek system ‘watch’ which runs a couple of kms from the back of the main homestead. First though I have to get over the bridge which has been under water since late friday night. Stay tuned for more soggy reports…