I Love a Sunburnt Country

I love a sunburnt country,

A land of sweeping plains

Of ragged mountain ranges,

Of droughts and flooding rains.

I love her far horizons,

I love her jewel sea.

Her beauty and her terror

The wide brown land for me. 

Dorothea MacKellar

This is a famous Australian poem which I think sums up our home quite aptly.  Particularly this week.  Less than a week ago it was blazingly hot - between 35'c and 41'c most days, there were fires, my lawn had mostly died and it  had cracks in it like a hard packed cricket pitch. I had lost plants, mainly my very old and very large staghorns and elkhorns.  We were desperate for rain and a cool change.

Today.....we are getting hammered as ex-cyclone Oswald sits over us.  We have winds up to 40 knots which have impressed upon me just how flexible and bendy some trees are. Goodness.  We are expecting 16 inches of rain over the next 24 hours or so and have already had 5 inches or so in the past couple of days.  The bridge between here and town has just gone over so we're officially flooded in until.... There has been flash flooding (my Aunt had a foot of water go through the bottom of her house and bend the roller door to the garage), regular flooding, and two tornadoes to the north of us.  

The wind hurtling through the trees out the front.  Taken from our front door at midday.

Pool not quite overflowing but do you see the water covering the little patch of grass to the back right?  I also note that the mango thief has been at it again.....evidence of eaten mango on grass in foreground of photo.  Hmmm.  Where the sky is light gray through the palm trees you should actually see the big trees at the back of our yard and then the mountain.  Too much rain for them to be visible.

You can see where the grass was dead just a few days ago and now all the soil is rushing down and under the tree towards the orchard and playground.  It's going to take me a week just to pick up the palm fronds and branches that have come down. 

Let's hope no trees come down because Jeff is away from home, stuck here. If you zoom out on the link you will see more mines along the coal seam to the north-west.

A very wet mining site (coal). He flew up on Wednesday to do some work for 2 days and now looks like he'll be stuck up there until next Thursday. He can't do the work he's supposed to because the part of the  mine he's working on is closed down. Below are some shots of the mining camp accommodations.

This is what the individual rooms look like - just imagine it's one photo showing the whole room, not Jeff's stuck together photo.  Through the wooden door is a little ensuite.  Shifts vary between mining sites generally from 4 days on 4 days off to 2 weeks on one week off.  So this is where the boys stay for the length of their shift.  Jeff is just a visitor doing other work so he was given an empty 'hobbit hole' as he calls it as he doesn't fit in with the camp shifts.  There is a camp mess where they go to eat, a small gym - also in a donga (one of these shipping container things) and a games room for those who need to get out of their quarters.

Because you can't have mining photos without a tip truck.....  These things are HUGE.  The top of the central wheel arch would tower over me.