Clouds coming in over Mount Howick

It hasn’t really rained when we wanted it to – well, not in the amounts we would like to have seen this year. The dams around the district have been drying to a puddle, and most farmers that have stock are worried about how they will water them. Us included.

It’s amazing how a short, sharp thunderstorm can turn things around. And there have been plenty of them in the last few weeks. The rain hasn’t been that widespread; you’ve needed to be under a thunder cloud to really get a dolloping, but there are plenty of people who have been. The highest reading I’ve heard was 186mm over about a week.

Not great weather to harvest.

in comes the rain

Until last Friday we’d only had a few showers – a couple of millimetres here and there. But by the time Sunday afternoon came around, we’d had nearly 40mm!

It started when I went into Woolies for my weekly shop. When I came out an hour later, it was still raining, and raining heavily. It was almost like a tropical downpour.

I was caught with quite a few others under the verandah of the Boulevard shopping centre, unable to put a toe out without being drenched. Finally it subsided, and slipping my shoes off so they didn’t get wet in the water that was flowing over the curbs, I raced for the car, unpacked the shopping and headed home.

Maybe I should have headed in the other direction, because the rain followed me.

Dark tentacles of thick, grey cloud rolled over Mount Howick as I pulled into the drive. The rain kept up heavy and steady for nearly twelve hours. Showers followed-up all of Saturday.

Love the colours of hay and the dark clouds

There’s been a bit of sunshine over the past few days. We did get harvesting briefly yesterday and for most of today, but the forecast is for more severe thunderstorms over the summer period. I just hope we can get the crops off before we have any more thunderstorms. The issue if they do come is that they might ignite fires.

Looking towards where the hay photo was taken from

The weather that Australia, in particular Queensland,  has been having, is incredible. I’ve cringed at, not only the destruction that Mother Nature has brought, but the grief and pain caused to humans and animals alike. The TV news seems to be full of detailed reports, shocking images, crying, homless people and animals moved from their natural habbitat.

While Carnarvon, (at the top of WA) and Queensland were flooding, parts of WA were burning. While Queensland was being hit by Cyclone Yasi, NSW, South Australia and Victoria, were/are enduring heat waves and more flooding.  Tassie has had floods, the Northern Territory is green, when it should be red! The list goes on.

Well the farm has had a few odd happenings, recently, too. We had a 47 degree day, a few Fridays ago and yesterday we had a freak hail storm – the hail melted the minute it hit the ground, but the rain that came with it was phenomenal!

We could hear the storm, before we saw it. The noise that the rain made, was nothing short of a drumming on the ground, then as it hit the tin roof, I felt like it might cave in, with the force!

I stood transfixed at the window, watching the birds drop from the sky, to the safety of the ground, the stock, heads down, run for bush and the dogs (who hate thunder) run for the safety of the garage. Finally I shook myself into gear and grabbed the camera!

Suddenly, as quickly as it started, it stopped. The sun shone from between gaps in the clouds, the stock ventured out from underneath the trees and started grazing again, and of course everything from, the trees to soil, looked like it had been washed.

As does this rose. The sun is shining now!

This is the finished version of our new dam! It’s huge isn’t it? All the guys have to do now is to run the grader around the bottom, smooth it all out and viola! It’s finished …

And a PS: the dam was finished on Thursday afternoon and on Friday we had 18mm of rain. Its got about 50cm of water in the bottom of it.
 
Bring on a wet winter (sorry to all the croppers!) to fill it to the brim!

Well, we’ve started! The seed is in the ground, now all we need in a bit of rain to get it up and going.

The blue skies look a bit too summery for my liking, but since this photo was taken a few days ago, we’ve had 10mm! It’s not enough yet, but it’s a start. There’s still a few more hundred acres to get in before we’ve finished the seeding program.

We’re not big croppers, we like our animals, but we grow a bit of grain for our feedlot, deliver a bit to the silos and see what’s left over.

The rows are straight, which indicates Anthony is driving the combine, not me! I’m always all over the place.

If only the wind would go around to the south, I’m sure this massive cloud could drop oodles of rain on us!

However, with the wind from the north, it’s unlikely that there will be any rain on our place. The sea is going to get it all!

Well it’s freezing here at the moment! A whopping 9.9 degrees!

The wind has been howling and we’ve had rain! 25mm fell in our gauge, although I’m not sure how widespread around the Esperance Shire its been – some of our mates who farm a bit further north than us, only got 5mm, so we’re still praying for rain for them and more for us! Esperance town site got 35mm so it must have been patchy.

It’s been too cold to let the kids outside, so we’re onto the board games. Monopoly and Uno are the two favourites, although I’ve been trying to get Yahtzee in there too!

Even though both the kids are wearing short sleeves, it’s only because I’ve got the fire so cranked up, trying to ward off the winter chill, that it’s quite warm inside.

I was looking through my photo file since I hadn’t had time to take away news ones for the blog and I came across this one. You might remember, about six or so weeks ago, we had a huge deluge of rain over about four days.

The landlines, power and mobiles were all down, but I still had my camera! This photo was taken at the end of all the rain.

Check out all that beautiful green grass! It’s not quite as green now but hopefully, once the opening rains arrive, it will be!

We’d love for it to look like this as the calves and lambs start arriving! The mums then have big bags of milk and the babies are contented.

Our first calf of the season was born four days ago, so it won’t be long, and there’ll be off-spring everywhere, running, bucking and playing! It’s a beautiful time of the year.

This is the second fog we’ve had in a couple of weeks. It’s becoming apparent that autumn is well on its way. It’s cooled down in the morning, calm and magic.

Autumn is one of my favourite times of the year. We’re all eagerly awaiting rain and we start to watch the weather charts a bit more closely than over summer – or at least we look for different things – in summer we’re watching to see if we’re lucky enough to avoid extreme temperatures, or if it’s good fishing weather!

When the rains come, the smell on the dry earth is something that could lift you to the clouds! It’s the most beautiful smell in this world.

Then the tiny specks of green start to appear and after a few more days, the life giving green grass is well on it’s way to being tall enough to be eaten by the stock.

That goodness for Mother Nature – we’d be lost without her!

What odd weather we’re having. On Monday the mercury hit 48 degrees, even though the official reading was 45. What’s a few degrees when it gets that hot though?!

After sweltering throughout the day, at about 5pm, it was still 40, so I loaded up the kids and headed to the beach. A cool change came through just as we arrived and while the kids, Rocket and I splashed at the water’s edge, the thunder rumbled all around.

Then it started to rain and rain it did! From Monday night until Thursday morning it rained, rained and rained a bit more! (Not one break in the gentle, steady rain.)

100mm of rain later and today is looking still threatening. Part of this has come from Cyclone Dominique which battered the north recently.

The power and phone has been out for the past two days so our new friend has been this generator. We’ve had extension cords running everywhere to try and keep the fridge and three freezers going.

Even our mobiles have been down so we have well and truly been isolated from the world! But the kids have had a brilliant time playing in the puddles — it hasn’t been cold.

Hayden and I are off to feed the cows now. With all the rain, they’ll be starving and in need of a good ‘nosh’ up.

With recent rains, Red Dust Country is no longer brown and dusty! In fact it looks quite idyllic through these photos that my Mum and Dad took!

Amazing photos of watching the water just as it starts to run down the creek and long suffering sheep on green pastures!

It makes me wish I was back there for a while! The gum trees are just so majestic and the hills give such character to this timeless land. Beautiful!

Hopefully it will give you and idea of the sort of country that Gemma, from Red Dust, was running and the battles and isolation she faced.