14. ROAD CONDITIONS WHEN IT WAS FLOODING AT BREWARRINA
winter rain affects the local roads from walgett to brewarrina
whereas flood water moves down slowly through the rivers,
seeping across the flat land, it whistles at the billabong's perimeter and cuts the dirt roads off,
rain and flood; each have a different affect on the road's surface,
making roads impassable and places inaccessible, locals are frightened of their own roads,
even in an eh holden station wagon, built for australian conditions,
the annual rainfall 352 mm, this decreases as you travel further west, where rainfall is unreliable,
where there is a winter rainfall dominance, and prolonged periods of low rainfall,
soon we are fully submerged, obsessed by rain and flood,
there is always the last road out of town,
it was a long stretch of road, would you do that stretch again?
we had a long dry stretch around december/january,
as long as a dry spell from broken hill and that stretch of road, to the accessible outback,
in the rain i learnt that the desert can turn damp and grey,
and the way in which the desert disappointed me in the cold, as though it was now unwild,
but i spotted its crumbling dry edges just beneath the thunderheads,
in the untamed rain that followed, the washaway, flash flood and the art of the 3 point turn,
'don't touch the red clay on the sides of the roads,
or you'll slide into the table drain and get bogged,'
dad woke up, 'more rain,'
'fucking shut up will you,' he woke me
and wanted to buy emma a bottle of scent, with a few scratchies wrapped around, it for her birthday.
('get her a bottle of scent coral, women love scent')
and called homosexuals 'shirt lifters' so john, coming from melbourne asked him,
'what about curtain raisers?' (to dad this sounded pretty serious)
and in reference to my second book from penguin, the one that displayed red on the spine,
dad said 'red's a pretty colour, the black fellas will like that,'
(meaning that the book should sell well in the outback)
well, I don't know about that,
road conditions;
caution, water is over the road at carter's swamp, please check with the shire council
before traveling in goodooga or the weilmoringle area,
the shire workers are really pissed off, mud up to the axles, they're buggered,
you've only got to smile at them and they'll throw a rock at you,
while doing nothing well,
meanwhile, birds are feeding in the floodways, coot, black ducks, wood ducks, pelican,
white necked heron, sacred ibis, straw necked ibis, egret, seagulls, grebes,
wedgetail eagles along the roads,
we are dodging black beetles around 11.00 am on the unsealed road to coolabah,
rainfronts are coming, in the way that the animals behave,
the wet red mud eating away at the bitumen, signposts toppling,
brown rivulets streaming over roads, graders along flood affected causeways, flooding,
traffic hazard ahead, ahead of the rivers not ahead of the rain,
this rain will affect unsealed roads, whereas the river's flooding will cut through the bitumen,
will create flood affected roads, will intersect and isolate,
worried mothers, stranded sunlight in the window glass of stranded properties,
took me six hours to get to bourke from bre, trees placed in the middle of the road,
to indicate where the big holes are, roads submerged and washaways,
eddie's from the city, doesn't know any better,
put it into four wheel drive to go through a bit of horse piss on the road,
but now the road is flooded, you can't see the ground, cloudy weather,
gary's from the bush, waited til it all dried up,
he'd been caught out before, mud up to both his ankles, sticky black mud,
if it rains along this stretch we're up shit creek without a paddle,
big thunderclouds moving down across the tarrion,
the blue heeler's tail is low with moisture, a barometer for wet weather,
in the summer she wags her tail in a more economical way,
cyclone; a clockwise circular motion, a flow of barometric winds,
a mini cyclone lifted everything, all our swags,
kevin laughed when a swag was lifted, until he found out that it was his swag,
my father is underneath the old mattress with his mother, and seven other brothers and sisters,
she prayed for all her children and covered all the mirrors,
my father is with his father and brothers, out in the great grey winter storms,
holding pieces of rubber hose that had been chopped up for them like a python,
my grandfather grasping the big knife, 'hold on tight or you'll get your fucken arses fried,''
as they all ducked down along the fenceline, holding onto their hats, lighting striking like rain,
it killed five hundred head of cattle out on the cato and ten thousand sheep,
striking the ground was easy for this kind of weather,
two aboriginals kids got blown away from the edge of the darling river,
lightning killed one and the other was unconscious for two days,
dad said; 'it was similar to rose street, when I went up to the hardware shop to get a globe
for the toilet light and one of you kids switched the power on as I was fitting it,
i lit up like a blue flame, but i had rubber thongs on' |
