Thursday, January 6, 2011

There is a soft bleating sound outside. It is dark. The bleat is a muffled staccato amongst the mating calls of frogs and cane toads. The amphibians are happy. We've had another flooding day. The creek, which has not stopped, broke its banks again and washed over the paddocks. We haven't even been down the back to check. R panicked a little and moved the cars to a neighbours house. Of course it didn't come to that. Still, the peach paddock was completely underwater and when we did take the cars to the neighbours she had a river coursing beneath her house. I rode the bike up the road this evening as the rains have passed and everywhere is the sibilant murmur of moving water. The roads shimmer beneath a shallow patina of water, the verges gurgle, the ditches guffaw. I have never seen water like this in all the time we've lived here. R is sick of it - and so was I for a day or two but, like a demented pendulum, I have swung back the other way. I found I remembered the drought too well, the promises made that I would never be sick of rain if and when it came. Give me rain any time over drought - even if the road, which the council has just repaired, has washed away again - in the same place. No doubt, there will be another cave in at Jackson's Yards. Can't see for myself for the causeways are impassable until the water subsides. But that will only take a couple of days. At least this time we have the phone. We lost it for over a week and as we have no mobile reception here R was feeling the loss. Not me. I hate phones and would happily never answer another.

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