Strange wet stuff falling from the sky… I think I’ve read about it somewhere. Hmm, its called rain.
Yes folks, after a total of 12mm of rain for all of January, and only two days of rain so far this year, it’s been raining solidly since about 9 pm yesterday. Good news and bad news.
The good news is that it might help a little with the drought… the bad is that it might prompt the state government to lift the nominal water restrictions and get people back to their normal habits.
The other bad news is that it woke me up around four this morning and I couldn’t get back to sleep. At five I heard the neighbour’s sprinklers come on outside the window, at five-thirty they went back off again. At six I gave up and got up, roughly two hours earlier than normal…
Riding to work was a pleasure, 20 °C and warm gentle rain, the smell of eucalypts — the not so pleasant smell of Gardiners creek — brim full with all the plastic and rubbish from storm-water drains all over South-East Melbourne…
Then it was sheer bloody mayhem all day today at Monash. A fantastic display of the fabled dance of “everybody run around like a headless-chicken frantically leaping from crisis to crisis…” Perhaps a little project management is needed — or more importantly, was needed about six months ago…
Arriving home, all I wanted to do was to sit down, relax, unwind, and perhaps sip an ice-cold beer… But it was not to be. I had to clean up, pack for the weekend, then get in the car and drive for eight hours to Bungendore in time for my nieces’ christening — and what a drive that was!
Friday night and rain never make it easy to get out of Melbourne, tonight was no exception. We left home at 6 pm, and after twenty minutes had managed to get to the freeway, probably a ten-minute walk from home! Not a good start, and the freeway was completely stationary, so we turned around, headed back out of Richmond to the north, skirted the city and rejoined the freeway/tollway somewhere around Footscray. Then it was just hours and hours of driving in rain that ranged from torrential to light drizzle, all the way to the Victorian border where it finally stopped.
Somewhere up around Gundagai the rain started again. then nearer Yass it all got a little too exciting… A car in front was about to overtake a semitrailer when the truck swerved out across both lanes, flashing its lights. The car dropped back, then tried again, again the truck driver swerved into his path… By this time, I’d caught them up and pulled into the right lane, intending to pass the dangerous-seeming driver and be well clear of him he swerved into my path and turned on his hazard lights, the truck in front also turned on its hazard lights.
Suddenly I realised what was going on, as we crested a slight rise and there on its side across the centre of the freeway was a recently crashed semi-trailer, bits of truck and cargo across the road. Unfortunately the cargo was cattle, but luckily it was dark, so we didn’t have to see too much. A few people were walking around the wreckage with torches, so the rest of us drove carefully past, peering into the rain and night, trying to spot the black steers that were running around on the freeway!
Safely past, we let the adrenalin ebb as we made our way onto the Barton highway, then the minor road from Murrumbateman to Bungendore. This last stretch is always nerve-wracking, it comes at the end of a long night’s driving, and there are always kangaroos at the side of the road, potentially leaping in front of the car…
Tonight, however, there were hopping fauna of a different kind. With it being the first decent rain yet this year, all the frogs for miles around were on the move… the roads were alive with frogs leaping across in the lights, desperate to cross from one side to the other, or back again! I’ve no idea how many we hit, as it was impossible to even try to avoid them.
2 am and we finally made it to Bungendore, said a brief hello and dropped straight into bed.
