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.
Bloody hell Prue, that is very scary. You were lucky to get through that, it must have been pretty frightening, so glad you are both ok. Hopefully the ants nests will be sorted soon and not cause a problem. Good that younhave enought water for the farm. I think 2020 will be going down i the history books . Keep,safe dear friend xxx x
It served to remove any thought of Covid-19 for a day, Libby. Have to say the ants were AWFUL! Right across the patio which is the whole front of the house. We knew there was an ants’ nest beneath the patio but had no idea it was as big. They had moved their eggs up to the top of the boot box in the midst of the flash-flood and were essentially moving in! It was like something from Indiana Jones – the scale of the creepies so enormous that I felt itchy all over!!!! All gone now and we’ve sprayed the whole patio with surface spray. Not good for respiratory health but what does one do? Take care!
Gosh…what a day. Hope you get rid of the ants!
Hi Barbara. Yes, ants all gone but the surface spray we used has also roused those horrid Portuguese millipedes and they are dying in numbers on the patio. At least they can’t cross the barrier into the house. It’s also raining again – not heavily. This will test my Covid-19 inability to stay inside! 😉
What amazing photos, Prue – the drive looks extremely scary. On the plus side, the beach now provides exciting exploring ground for curious dogs. I’m glad you got home safely in the end!
I walked along the beach again with the dog and mostly, sadly, had to keep him on lead because there are so many sticks lying around that you could almost see him salivating. His track record with sticks and mouths is well-known!
But nature is astonishing. We had quite a big sea the night after the storm and already half of the ocean beach is becoming white and sand is covering the detritus. The sea too was clear in the middle of the beach.
The river sand is whiter but where we swim is still a brown sludge of mud, twigs, leaves, seeds and branches all meshed together. It would be nice to have a dredge or vaccuum cleaner to suck it all up. I have no doubt the boaties will organise for the channel at the mouth to be dredged (for which we will pay), but the river beach itself will be left to fester until Time does its thing.
It gave us all something to think about apart from Covid-19. 🙂