Floods

1. xymonau8 January 2011, 11:39 GMT +01:00

The town I'm in is the next to flood. I don't think it will affect me directly - apart from the incessant rain, which is maddening - but both bridges in town have been inundated and are closed, which means there is only one way out to the Bruce Highway, the major link through Queensland. However, if too much rain occurs, my workplace is across the road from houses that back onto the river, and it's possible, I think, that we might be affected. The whole town is pretty flat, so I don't really know where the water is likely to lie.

This has been such a dreadful time for so many people in this state. We've had rain for months, unseasonal for winter, and then the rainy season - summer - brought downpours. Ten people have died. And although some of the worst crises have passed or are passing gradually, the rotten rain just won't go away. I've started to grow webbed feet! LOL Of course, the river levels are from the catchment areas that feed into them, so it doesn't have to be raining much locally for a flood to occur. However, nature has obliged with plenty of local rain so we wouldn't feel left out.

I'm reminded of a line from a very old Australian poem, "droughts and flooding rains". I'm going to indulge myself and post it here, for those who haven't read it. It was written in the early 1900s, I think, and it can always bring on the tears for me. Don't read it if you're easily bored! :)

My Country

By Dorothea Mackellar


THE LOVE of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes,
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins;
Strong love of grey-blue distance,
Brown streams and soft, dim skies—
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

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!

The stark white ring-barked forests,
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon.
Green tangle of the brushes,
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops
And ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the cattle die—
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the Rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back threefold;
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.

An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land—
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand—
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.