Flood & Fury

NSW Floods

It’s hard to find the words to express how I feel right now – beleaguered, despairing, so damn weary.  We survived the drought of 2019, although many of our much loved animals didn’t.  We watched in horror as a river that had never dried before, did, and remaining pools dropped by inches in evaporation as the heat scalded on.  Then came the bushfires – terrifying months as fire swirled around us, every breath a thick pall of smoke.  We almost walked off the land at the end of 2019.  We were brittle, embittered, bitter, broken.  But we pledged ourselves a year to heal and see.  Lockdown gave us precious time to reconnect with this ancient oasis we are privileged to call home, to watch platypus diving and paddling peacefully, to see the land start its long journey of recovery.

It was when we finally got away for a beach holiday in early December and rain lashed every moment that the tsunami of grief in me at what we had been through finally forced me to my knees.  I mourned every lost beast, faces I would never see again, foreheads I would never rub.

And the rain kept coming this year, flood after flood.  Yesterday the Ellenborough River burst its banks, flooding the flats in front of our house for the first time in living memory.  We had a frantic hour as water rose over 3 metres, saving animals, tiny house, trailers, tractor.  We have lost a bridge that bisects our property and affords us access to the world, the flying fox heavily damaged by the uprooted trees floating like toothpicks past our house in the raging torrent.  We won’t know about the concrete bridge at the entrance to our property for weeks, when the river has finally receded.  Acres of riverbank are gone, our telephone pole and connection to the world too.

It’s a lot.  I don’t know how we can recover from this.  We still haven’t finished replacing all the fences we lost in the fires.  It’s not Mother Nature’s fury that makes me depressed.  It’s Australia’s belligerent inaction on the Climate Crisis that every other nation on earth understands is a clear and present danger to our children and theirs.  It’s the smug superiority of these career politicians with their lack of empathy and humanity, propping up the coal mines with public money while they sacrifice the future of the planet on the altar of their own greed for power.

First there was drought, then fires, then plague (Covid, mice, locusts), now floods.  How is it possible that these bible thumpers can’t heed the message?  Or do they truly believe that the end is coming, only they will be saved, and to hell with the rest of us?

Mad though their rank stupidity makes me, it is the ignorance of those who vote for them that makes me despair for our country, for our planet, for our food security, for our future.

We’ve been fully off grid on our farm since 2007, we provide our own power for all our needs.  Solar is the obvious choice for Australia’s future.  We need to start blue sky mining, not building new coal mines.  We have a global opportunity for clean air and sky tourism, to be world leaders in the renewable revolution.  But we are governed by luddites and city centric public servants with no idea what is going on, or needed, in rural and regional areas.  Right now we need the Army to come in and rebuild bridges and roads, and we need a plan for ever more dire climate related emergencies.  There’s no hope of that.  Which is why I feel hopeless.

Prone over Porcelain and Snoozing my life Away

Now I know that Little Miss has said that the farm is to be organic but we have a weed problem that is out of control and several steep banks where even the death defying George daren’t take his tractor, so there is only one thing for it – Grazon.
Of course I can’t do any spraying (or much of anything since I am so often prone on the sofa snoozing my life away!) so my brave husband-to-be has to go into the chemical fray.  We are both so conscious of the toxic fallout from these quite frankly HORRIBLE chemical soups that we would far rather not expose ourselves, and I made Ged get all the kit to protect himself.  Attractive, isn’t it?!
Little Miss appears to have had a hand in the proceeding from where she watches her potential parents as they endeavour to get her new home finished for her arrival, because not long after Ged commenced Operation Chemical Fallout I heard swearing and stripping in the front yard and found that he had come under enemy fire!  For some reason beyond my comprehension the sprayer I have used faithfully for the past few years turned traitor on its new master and blew a gasket (literally!) causing a fountain of chemical soup to deluge the one part of his body unprotected . . . his eyes.  Poor, poor love was in so much pain so we flushed and flushed and flushed, rang the poisons hotline and then laid him down with a cold flannel over his face to rest them as they recuperated.  Looks like Little Miss is going to get her way after all  . . !
It is very hard to feel enthused about the renovation while I am Little Miss Slumber and I am afraid I am falling behind.  I went to the doctor and we agreed that an ultrasound was essential to correctly date my pregnancy so we booked me in that same afternoon and Ged came to have his first peek of his little princess.  Apparently there’s a very strong heartbeat there and we are six weeks pregnant so we are in for a lot of momentous changes to our lives this  year, culminating in a new arrival at the end of September (they say 25th, I say 22nd) but I have been known to be wrong before . . . . !!
When I told Mummy she said ‘are you feeling sick yet?’ and I said in my most superior and patronising tone ‘I don’t believe in morning sickness, it’s all in the mind’.  Boy, was I wrong about that!  I never knew you could feel so sick and still stand up (although lying down is by far my best position for coping with the unrelenting nausea.  Why do they call it morning sickness  it’s from the moment I move from horizontal to halfway close to vertical in the morning, until the moment I lay my weary head down to sleep at night.  Ugh.  And what is it with the secret society of women who have borne children, that they never initiate their childless sisters into the horrors of hanging over ceramic from dawn to dusk?  I’m amazed that the world is as over-populated as it is – I can’t imagine why you’d willingly go through this more than once (even with the Australian $5,000 baby bonus and exhortations to have ‘one for you, one for Australia’!!)
Ah well, this too shall pass . . . . x