not exactly caught up, so much as bogged down....

we're relatively high up here (466mts), but we front a river (thankfully on the higher bank) that rapidly changes from a pretty little 'stream' to a 25meter wide raging torrent..... at the moment it's inbetween.

i just want our toilet to work (the septic tank is water-logged), to be able to walk across the paddocks without water spilling over my boots (and in places, over gum-boots).

that said, if this is climate change, bring it on - probably a lot cheaper replacing all our guttering than running the river pump during droughts!

I was on a tour a few weeks back that required a detour to get to Wagga Wagga during the ealier flooding. Even so, some of the suit cases in the hold underneath the bus got a bit wet after going through a newly created ford across the road at The Rock. By the looks of things it's worse now than then.

I haven't been affected where I live (Mornington Peninsula, south of Melbourne) except that the grass is growing like mad.

"I'm from the "inverse flooding" side of the country. We've had 44mm rain in 11.5 months. Sure could use some of that water from the east side."

Dorothea Mackeller sure got it right with her "droughts and flooding rains".

I'm in the middle of Sydney - no floods yet, but plenty of rain.
The irony of all this is that for years produce prices have risen 'due to the drought'; now it will be 'due to the rain'.

The farmers are the people who are really feeling pain. A decade of drought, finally a good year of rains, great crops, then much of them drowned in floods. O'Brien got it pretty correct in http://www.middlemiss.org/lit/authors/obrienj/poetry/hanrahan.html"Said Hanrahan"[/link]

Well, caught the spirit of living on the land, even though in "those days" the weather actually did follow a seasonal pattern. We'll all be rooned, now isn't so ironic.

Glad to hear everyone is safe and dry, so far.

Don't forget that it is a triple whammy for the farmers: after the droughts and floods comes the locust plague! (Watch out for bush fires next!)

It was ever thus

I used to have relatives who lived on the land. Their part of the family pretty much built the town of Nyngan, only learned that recently.
Never once did I hear them complain and they sure did it tough. Loosing almost all your sheep to drought and then seeing the few that made it drown, I could never cope with that. They could never cope with living in a city either, they hated 'the big smoke'.

Bob.

after the droughts and floods comes the locust plague!
actually the locusts were already in full swing before the floods arrived!

Too much to hope that the floods will drown the locusts.

"actually the locusts were already in full swing before the floods arrived!"

Ah yes, I forgot. The locusts in southern NSW are different to those in Victoria, which swarm later.

well i'm standing in the middle of my paddock with my can of 'rid'....

the other thing to be aware of is this weather is bring out the tics - which over here can cause all sorts of horrendous problems, including paralysis through to death. fortunately we're* high / cold enough to avoid them.

*right at the top of the hunter valley in the liverpool ranges (about 40km north of scone for those of you familiar with the area)