Dampened enthusiasm

One of the glories of blogging is putting information out into what used to be referred in radio days as the ether and getting responses back. It’s like throwing out a fishing line and pulling in, not fish but nuggets of information. One day I write about eroding gullies and several days later back comes an email telling me exactly when the floods of the late 1800s were: January 1887, July 1889, March 1890 and February 1893. Apparently there were also landslides on the Minden side of the range during the 1974 flood.

Fascinating though this information is, right now it just fills me with trepidation. That and the headlines on ABC news along the lines of “More rain predicted for south east Queensland” and this morning’s ‘Severe weather warning issued for south east Queensland.” The dams are full, neighbours are suggesting gullies can be avenues for water sports, the skies are cloudy and we have a house scheduled to be delivered this week. This morning I was awake at 4am and lay in bed listening to the rain falling and worrying. It’s silly really because there’s nothing I can do about it but there is that huge gap between knowledge and reality. I was waiting for the phone call this morning telling me that the house arrival had been rescheduled. It has, but so far only pushed back one day to Thursday, 7 February. This of course is entirely dependent on the weather – I remain fixed to the Bureau of Meteorology’s radar which coincidently is located on the Bluff at Ashwell even though it is referred to as the Marburg radar.

I am curious about that July 1889 flood. Our peak rainfall months are October through February and occasionally into March. A July flood would be an unusual occurrence. But I’m not sure that I can bear to read about floods and mayhem just this moment. I’ll tuck that away in my future research file for now.