17. THE STORM MOVES AROUND THE PROPERTY
with cyclonic temperaments, our faces awash with the pale light before rain,
we wait deep inside the shallow fibro of dad's house for the grey sky to travel, to take direction,
'five points of rain and you're stuck out there on the culgoa road,
bogged to the axles in the red mud, take you a day to walk back in,
eaten alive by mosquitoes,' five points of rain is five minutes worth,
we are dodging the floods in the area, flat and travelling water that spreads out
across the land like the spokes of a rake or a fan,
local road condition reports are faxed into the shire daily,
we are moving on wet roads in the e.h. holden as the storm moves around the properties,
'geeze, don't go out there, wait to see what the storm is doing,
you don't want to go out there, stuck on those roads,
wait to see if the storm moves around the property,' it's a hit and miss situation,
some properties go under while others stay high and dry in the winter sun,
the water's whistling around the dead dry tinder sides,
the roads are loose gravel turned to slippery clay, dosed with rain, shut, blocked off,
a cold red wind is coming up from the sunset in victoria, bad luck this time,
you have to turn back around on the bitumen, see-saw it,
'don't like the sound of that weather out there and don't like the look of it,
what's that I can hear?, it's getting close now,' one drop splashes on the car bonnet,
meanwhile another property a kilometre away is poured onto,
it's spreading everywhere through bourke and louth, it's coming straight across,
the storm that moves around the property has changed the layout of the land,
it has altered the way we live in the next 24 hours or over the next 4 weeks,
pray that more rain doesn't come, if praying to god doesn't work then pray to the devil,
rain is good for farmers, trees, birds and migrating fish,
rain is good, so long as it doesn't interfere with what you are doing,
mud is the basis for what the rain is doing, rain has separate ideas from our own,
mud will bugger the axle up, clog the engine up, creep right up both legs and down into boots,
your vehicle will slide off the road and get stuck in the table drain |
