I apologised to Ernest, and considered ‘Rooftop. For Sale. Rarely experienced’, effectively capturing my mood. I am cold, sodden, and now, a weakening westward light is going to add darkness to my predicament. And this bloody corrugated iron is drilling a divot into my bum! I am thinking our luck has evaporated. I knew we should never have bought the property.
You were banging on about the nearby burbling creek, the wildlife, the idyll, perfect to raise a family: the adventures we were going to have. Yep, we’re in the middle of one right now! At least Maggie and the kids went into town the day before yesterday. They are in the emergency shelter set up at the school hall.
It stopped raining two years after we bought the acreage. The creek ran dry, the sweet green pastures disappeared, eaten out: remaining tufts scorched by a ner-ending, northerly blast. Four years of buying feed for the cows, and an ochre-coloured expanse stretching as far as the eye could see. Sorry Dorothy, but a “…sunburnt country’ just doesn’t quite ‘cut the mustard’.
I raised my head and a cold trickle of water sluiced off my hat, neatly finding and channelling into my shirt collar. Bloody marvellous!
The rain started two weeks ago. We rejoiced; the local church even held services, offering spiritual thanks. But maybe we were overzealous. The rain didn’t stop, and at week’s end, our creek was showing a new livery: at first ‘a banka’ but then it abandoned known boundaries, advancing into the shedding, and then drowning the veggie patch. That’s when the family evacuated. I stayed!
We lost power on Day 5. By Day 10 I had moved our appliances, family albums, document, toys and some of the smaller furniture upstairs. The water continued to rise! The house now stood, an island in a swirling, malevolent brownness. Carcasses, tree limbs and a whole flotilla of hay bales floated past.
Before my mobile died, I texted our address and a brief situational synopsis to the SES; I needed help. I took a hammer with me into the ceiling space, as the water swamped the downstairs rooms and was making a steady advance up the bedroom walls.
I was surprised how easily I had dislodged part of the roof. A couple of whacks and I was sitting, perched on the apex of the roof, my back against the kitchen chimney. If the rain would stop, and if I could soften the corrugational indents on my backside, I might even declare my situation as OK.
I reviewed my earlier reverie. Should we sell? Dorothy had gone on to talk about this “… flooding rain…”, but it wasn’t rocket science to know that the flood would eventually deliver a bountiful return. Should we cut our losses. Maybe swap the rural idyll for a town allotment atop a hill!
I heard the beat of the chopper, and then I was spotlit. “G’day Jim. Just slip into the harness and we’ll head upstairs!”