Biblical proportions

It's official. It's been raining for 40 days and 40 nights. The newspaper says so.
Just last week I was telling someone that I felt like Mrs Noah, but then I thought about it and rephrased my statement. I actually feel like one of Mrs Noah's neighbours who watched the ark float gently away on the rising flood while being left with a mop and bucket and lots of misplaced optimism.

My rain gauge said we had 200 mm (8 ins) of rain from noon yesterday till noon today. The surprising prediction for tomorrow is . . .




rain.

The BIG wet

The mighty Burdekin River.
It is mighty at the moment. That water is nearly 10 metres deep and it is flowing reasonably fast. It is being filled by the overflow from the Burdekin Dam and this morning the experts reckoned that water was flowing 3 metres deep above the dam spillway and that was equivalent to I forget how many Olympic size swimming pools every second. Mr Sunshine said he thought the figure was 36 pools, but we can't be sure. We can be sure that it is a lot of water. If you want to see more of our BIG wet click here for a gallery of photos from the major regional newspaper.

The amazing thing is that normally there is nothing below this bridge. Nothing except a big drop, way down to a dry sandy river bed. That is how we normally see it. Year in, year out. So I thought I would share the novelty of having a real river flowing with gigalitres (I just made that up, is it a word?) of water.
I took a few more photos while we were out today.

I couldn't decide if Groper Creek was named after the fish or the fellows who lived there, but since it is a fishing village I decided to give the fellows the benefit of the doubt.

What appears to be a small river is the road at Groper Creek. The power poles and street lighting would seem to prove there is a road there somewhere. I was just wondering how the people in the house get in and out. There is no other road. Groper Creek must be used to flooding. All the houses are on stilts and it is the only place I've seen where houses have upstairs garages. I kid you not. Some have built massive concrete ramps up to their garages which are along side their high set homes.

I wish we could send some of the water down to our drought stricken and bush fire ravaged southern states.

It's still raining

If you click on the collage you will enlarge it. Clockwise from top left -

1. My feet sinking into the marsh that is my front lawn.

2. It looks like a pile of dirt, but it is a dead ant cemetery. Whenever it rains they bring all their mates' little ant bodies into my house :(

3. Front door mat, Venice style.

4. The wind did us a favour by bringing down the dead branches out of all the trees around the town.

5. The bucket on the patio filled up entirely with rain water just by being left out in the open for a couple of days.

6. I was about to open the windows for some fresh air when I looked out over the neighbour's houses and changed my mind.

So far this week we have had nearly 250mm of rain (10 ins) and more is expected tomorrow. A botanist back in the early days of settlement described this part of Australia as an area of total drought with intermittent floods. Some things never change.