A little bit of an adventure…

Life’s so edgy at the moment. So filled with flux, change and anxiety, that sometimes, an adventure, especially one that one hasn’t asked for, can certainly give one something else to think about.

Yesterday, we had to go to the city from our coastal home. We went armed with the relative papers and it felt like a WWII movie – documentation in case one was pulled up at the border!

It began to rain whilst we carried out our city appointment, a heavy downpour. As we returned to the coast at about 2.30 PM, it became quite thunderous, occasioning the wipers on their highest setting and everything was going swimmingly (not a good term to use, I know) until we got to the area just above our home on the coast and which someone in some far distant moment in time euphemistically called Paradise.

It’s a rocky gorge on the edge of the Prosser River, maybe fifteen minutes from our home and the rain was sheeting down over the stones. I’ve travelled this road all of my life and this is the first time I’ve been in such monumental rain and been afraid as we drove along the side of the river with waterfalls cascading down.

 

 

There was one spot where I was convinced the road was being undermined at the river edge and ultimately I was proved right. I was quite nervous – it was a half-light, the road was a skating rink, and the power of the water seemed pretty breathtaking.

We ended in a halted convoy beyond which we were unable to go. Trees and rocks had flooded over the road and it was impassable.

What to do? Go back the way we had come? Sit and wait it out?

We turned, progressing back along the road at snails’ pace. The river was a cataract and we would have drowned had we slid off the road.

We journeyed for an hour to an alternative but rough back road (you need a 4 Wheel drive or an All Wheel drive) only to find a police barricade, as one of the bridges along the road had been flooded.

Said policeman agreed we could return to the city for the night, instead of our nominated home on the coast (Covid-19 Rule – no travelling between homes).

The highway was cleared by the SES in the hours after midnight and so we headed back up after Dawn and found the road in a sad way, the Prosser even sadder. If you follow my blog, you know how white is my beach sand and how clear are my favourite swimming waters…

 

It’s turgid mud now. Think or Melbourne’s Yarra, Launceston’s Tamar, and any other muddy waters across the globe. Houses have been flooded, half the school’s mulch has covered the road near us, the rest is in our garden, one of the crossings that joins West Shelley Beach with Millington’s Beach has been undermined.

Our house is fine, thank the stars, apart from the ant’s nests under the patio. That required some cleaning and, unfortunately, spraying as they were looking for new homes and our house, our bootbox, in fact our whole porch, is not for them.

The village received 4 inches in 5 hours. Further south, our farm received a much gentler 2 inches. As my family have said – we’re now set for the year on the farm, all things being equal!

We won’t get the beaches back in a hurry, there’s a lot of mess to clean up. It’s unlikely there’ll be fresh fish for Easter as boating will be dangerous with all the logs floating at sea, but summer’s a half a year off so maybe nature will just do its thing and by the first warm weather swim on October 16th, it’ll be like this again!

Cheers.