As kids, the waterhole on the Eight Mile Creek was the go-to centre of our world. The four of us would ride our bikes down to its deep watery world, then line up to swing off the rope for that first exhilarating ‘bomb’. We had no idea where it was eight miles from, or to. We supposed from somewhere, now forgotten.
There was a spring at the bottom of the waterhole. As we got older, and could hold our breath for longer, we’d dive down and see the bubbles escaping. We discovered quite a few springs in the area, all with those telltale surface bubblers. The creek never dried up, not even during the long, irregular periods of drought. It just gently burbled along, crystal clear, inviting. But it could be a monster!
Dad and Grandpa used to talk of the floods, huge sheets of water, stretching off towards the horizon. “Never got near the house …”, Grandpa used to reflect, “… built us on top of this little rise.” Even so, he and Dad had taken the precaution of building an earth retaining wall outside the homestead fence.
I remember Christmas 2000. The Georgina ran ‘a banker’, in turn, enthusing our little tributary creek to stretch its wings. The Eight Mile came up, but even in flood, it was still eight hundred metres from home. Two weeks later, we noticed the green carpet delineating the flood’s extent. Dad went to the Mount Isa cattle sales, buying eight hundred young weaners.
In February, we hosted the annual Eight Mile District get-together. Mum was planning for weeks, ordering extra groceries and grog, for delivery on the next mail plane.
That Saturday night, everyone was pretty relaxed: the booze flowed freely. There was talk of the recent stock sales, the floods, and the Council’s road-maintenance backlog. Someone mentioned the unseasonal conditions – the temperatures had topped 45 degrees eight times last month. That was the trigger – the elephant was off and trumpeting!
Wearie Robbie, from across the range, rendered Dorothy Mackellar’s “a land of sweeping plains … of droughts and flooding rains…” while Don Smalljoy, our next-door neighbour, quipped about the bloody woke lefties climate hoax. Furious head-nodding, beers and declarations about the historic natural order did the rounds. No climate change in these parts!
March, and another cyclone formed in the Gulf – the eighth in three years! The heavens opened: you could cut it with a knife! Eight days without let-up, and the creek crept closer. The family boarded the mail plane on the Saturday. I stayed.
By eight on Sunday morning, the creek breached our levy. By nine I was on the roof as the unending muddy deluge crept into the house, up the walls, over the gutters. This was going to be tricky – no mobile coverage and the rain kept falling.
A chopper hovered. A Hi-Viz-clad figure descended and dangled in front of me. She suggested I slip into the harness. “Hi, I’m Angela, you must be Bach?”