Nine months of Winter?

Goodness it's cold tonight!  We've got the Rayburn burning in our back room/kitchen but the rest of the house is like a freezer!!!  I feel like we're in practice for the UK Winter.  When we started talking about it tonight we realized that we're going to get our Aussie Winter and then an even worse Winter.  In fact with it being cold already now in May, except for perhaps a slight easing of the weather early September in Australia and hopefully a few good weeks in the UK in October, we've got close to a nine month Winter.

I must say I'm not very much looking forward to having to go out the caravan, across the driveway, into the shed and right down to the other end of the building to use the bathroom. It's going to be absolutely freezing.  More good practice.

Will there be water left for us?!

The blog reading lately is increasingly alarming.  Are you guys running out of water?  It's hard to imagine that here we are at the tail of our Summer and everything is awash from the heavy rains, and over there in England you're supposed to have just done Winter and there is already talk of canal closures and restrictions.

We just hope there is some water left for us by the time we get there.  Please save us some!

Floods

This crazy country of ours.  We've had so much rain the last week or two, although here in central Victoria it's eased off now.  In the north of the state and in parts of New South Wales they are battling terrible floods.

The little town of Nathalia have a temporary flood barrier built to attempt to hold the flood waters at bay.  Last night there were townsfolk evacuating after a second evacuation notice was issued with the danger of the town being inundated if the levee breached. On the news they said the water that was appearing on the other side of the levee had actually come from under the road from the enormous pressure of the flood waters on the other side.  Last night they had the army, the State Emergency Service and the Country Fire Authority all frantically plugging up the spots where leaks were appearing.

These photos from the Herald Sun : Nathalia floods.  The metal barrier is holding back what looks to be well over a metre of water.  I don't think I'd want to be standing by that barrier if it lets go.

In the words of Dorothea Mackellar :

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.

Rain on

We've had quite a bit of rain in the last few days.  Some areas of our state (Victoria) and also New South Wales have been flooded.  Some of them are copping it for a second or third time since the flooding we had over last Summer.  Shops washed out and homes with flooring and other possessions ruined.  It's crazy.

We're having a drier day today, according to the weather report, but the few days following are expected to be wet again.  Poor Mick went out on Monday and spread fresh gravel on our garden paths.  The extremely heavy rain of Sunday night had all but washed it away.  He was horrified when we got another dose of very heavy rain the following night. 

We try not to complain about rain having lived with drought for so long, plus the temperature isn't so hot.  Rain on!

What a storm!

We usually sleep with one bedroom window open just a little.  With the recent hot weather we've been having, we have had the window under our front verandah wide open and often the window on the side of the house open too.  Last night when we went to bed Mick closed the side window saying it looked like we'd be getting some rain.  With no verandah on the side, that window is exposed to the elements.  The front window is well protected from the rain by the low verandah and in all the time we've lived here we have never had rain touch the glass.


I woke to the feeling of water spraying on my feet and thought I was dreaming.  After a minute I realized my feet really were damp and I thought the roof was leaking.  There was a fierce thunder storm with a constant rumble of thunder and lightening that flashed without pause. The power was off and by then Mick had woken to my stumbling around trying to turn on lights that weren't working.  The carpet between the front window and the end of the bed was quite wet.  The wind was blowing so hard it was literally blowing the rain under the verandah and into the bedroom.  It's never happened in 12 years.

We met in the laundry - Mick trying to find a torch and me dragging out the stack of old towels.  When we shone the torch at the front door there was water being forced under it and the trickle was growing and spreading across the floor boards.  I bundled towels across the bottom of the door.  With the bedroom window firmly shut we lay towels across the carpet to soak up the worst of it.  Back in bed I thought perhaps I should check the back door but being on the opposite side of the house it was unlikely that the rain would come in that way too.

There has been the odd occasion where the wind has blown so hard that it's forced the rain up the back verandah and it's poured down the back door and under it.  A weather strip at the bottom of the door has made it much less likely but it has been known to happen.  There was water running under the back door!  How could the wind blow so hard from both the North and the South.  Couldn't it make up it's mind?!  More towels across the bottom of the back door.

This morning the power is back on and there's no wind, thunder or lightening - just a good constant rain.  It's great to have a decent amount of rain.  No garden watering this week then.

Thinking of a UK Winter

We were talking narrowboats the other night... yes, I know, we spend a lot of time talking about them... and realized that this time next year we may be heading into our first UK Winter.  With the Aussie Summer upon us I thought I might find a "narrowboat in the snow" photo for my laptop background.  I searched on the net and found some fabulous photos.  I noticed that almost all the photos I liked had come from one source and that I'd probably seen them all before - the blog written by Fiona and John on nb Epiphany.

I emailed Fiona to ask if it's ok to put their photos on my blog and she made this comment "the snow last year was the worst we have ever encountered on the canals so maybe you won't have it so bad when you come over".  So bad?  What do you mean? We want snow!!  Now I know all you folk who live on your narrowboats will probably think we're crazy to wish for snow, and I know it will rarely look as pretty as these pictures.  I know it gets muddy and slushy when the snow melts.  We just want to experience it all.  Watch this space..... we might one day be complaining about the cold and the snow!

Meanwhile, here's what we're looking forward to.
 

 

It feels like Spring has arrived!

One sign of approaching Spring is something that has happened for the first time this year - we've had kookaburras nesting in the gum trees at the back of our property.  For the last couple of weeks we've heard them several times a day.  It's such a lovely Aussie sound.

Yesterday was a very mild day and I sat at work with the front door, and the door onto the office balcony, wide open.  It was unseasonal for what is effectively mid Winter.  Today was even warmer, reaching 22 degrees!!  The weather forecast says it will cool back down in a couple of days time.

My mum and her partner came up today for me to do their tax returns and we took lunch up to the "new" house to sit in the sun.  Great day!