The Birthday Boy!!!
I could just about cut'n'paste the last entry and change the dates.
Car off the road for 2 weeks, blown head gasket, ratshit radiator etc. $1950. Went to pick it up and go and get it registered (one day after the due date) but no, needs 5 new tires. $1200. This is now about equal to what I paid for it. But still, it's got 300,000K's on it, and all that's been done is stuff that wears out or breaks anyway. So the bastard had better be good for another 300,000 K's, I'm tellin' you!
Despite the pain and anguish of this expense, when I drove away from the garage it was like riding on pillows! Amazing the difference good tyres makes.
The Old Chook has been in and out of hospital several times again, and THIS TIME they got it right. They gave her a blood transfusion straight away, which made her a lot better very quickly, and another one before they released her to go home. Getting an oil change seems to work when your own blood is thin and not very red.
Had visitors three times in the last 2 weeks. Ray came up for a couple of days, but had to cut short his time as his wayward son was being a complete tosser at home. Then the following week The Duck and his girlfriend stayed overnight on their way through to Brisbane - the night the flooding rains started in South-East Queensland!!
Weather-wise it was all downhill from there. Our river rose alarmingly for the third time in three months and it looked for a while like the town was going to be flooded. The sandbags were placed at shop doorways, everyone went home, and there was a queue a mile long at our local supermarket, because Coles and Woolies downtown were closed. They're both on the river bank and the Police closed down all the businesses that were at risk.
Most of the water that's lying around is backwater, though. The river is very high and has broken its banks in several places, but the two main levees have held, and the main downtown area didn't get any actual raging floodwaters. In the 1949 flood, brick houses lining the streets downtown were destroyed at 3 AM when the river broke through, and people lost their lives. Those houses were eventually bulldozed in the late 1950's, when funding was finally made available, and the sites were turned into sports fields.
Of course, the weekend that the river peaked we had our third visitor, Sean from Sydney, who was invited to town to provide a lighting workshop at the theatre. Naturally, with towns and villages being cut off by floods, the 10 registered attendees couldn't make it, so we had a very personalised tutorial rather than a workshop for 10.
The river is still high but the weather has settled down now, so in a week or so the water will have gone down. Being a coastal alluvial valley, this is a cyclical event which top-dresses the pasturelands down on the river flats, and most people are prepared for the event. Unfortunately, the news crews covering the flood were beating it up unmercifully, claiming the town was being evacuated, etc. We had several frantic calls from friends elsewhere wanting to know if we were OK. The news reporters were filming themselves standing in front of raging torrents in Grafton ( 100 miles North) and talking about Kempsey !! No wonder people have low opinions of TV news reports!!
I took a few pics -
This is the levee to the north of town looking towards the Highway which is still cut.
This is the river where it sweeps majestically round the bend. You can see the southern levee as a line of green on the right of the pic. The town is out of frame to the right.
There's not much of interest in flood pics - vast expanses of brown water, doesn't mean much unless you know the lie of the land in drier times.
Anyway, after all this crap - IT'S MY BIRTHDAY !! Sixty bloody two. I bought myself some cigars, some beers, and a new 12 foot fishin' rod with reel. I deserve it. Now I have to wait for the river to go down before I can go fishing. Funny thing - a resident of Smithtown, a small riverside village about 12 miles downstream, video'd a shark swimming up the main street !! And another resident reported catching several mullet in his garage !! Only in the country.
Car off the road for 2 weeks, blown head gasket, ratshit radiator etc. $1950. Went to pick it up and go and get it registered (one day after the due date) but no, needs 5 new tires. $1200. This is now about equal to what I paid for it. But still, it's got 300,000K's on it, and all that's been done is stuff that wears out or breaks anyway. So the bastard had better be good for another 300,000 K's, I'm tellin' you!
Despite the pain and anguish of this expense, when I drove away from the garage it was like riding on pillows! Amazing the difference good tyres makes.
The Old Chook has been in and out of hospital several times again, and THIS TIME they got it right. They gave her a blood transfusion straight away, which made her a lot better very quickly, and another one before they released her to go home. Getting an oil change seems to work when your own blood is thin and not very red.
Had visitors three times in the last 2 weeks. Ray came up for a couple of days, but had to cut short his time as his wayward son was being a complete tosser at home. Then the following week The Duck and his girlfriend stayed overnight on their way through to Brisbane - the night the flooding rains started in South-East Queensland!!
Weather-wise it was all downhill from there. Our river rose alarmingly for the third time in three months and it looked for a while like the town was going to be flooded. The sandbags were placed at shop doorways, everyone went home, and there was a queue a mile long at our local supermarket, because Coles and Woolies downtown were closed. They're both on the river bank and the Police closed down all the businesses that were at risk.
Most of the water that's lying around is backwater, though. The river is very high and has broken its banks in several places, but the two main levees have held, and the main downtown area didn't get any actual raging floodwaters. In the 1949 flood, brick houses lining the streets downtown were destroyed at 3 AM when the river broke through, and people lost their lives. Those houses were eventually bulldozed in the late 1950's, when funding was finally made available, and the sites were turned into sports fields.
Of course, the weekend that the river peaked we had our third visitor, Sean from Sydney, who was invited to town to provide a lighting workshop at the theatre. Naturally, with towns and villages being cut off by floods, the 10 registered attendees couldn't make it, so we had a very personalised tutorial rather than a workshop for 10.
The river is still high but the weather has settled down now, so in a week or so the water will have gone down. Being a coastal alluvial valley, this is a cyclical event which top-dresses the pasturelands down on the river flats, and most people are prepared for the event. Unfortunately, the news crews covering the flood were beating it up unmercifully, claiming the town was being evacuated, etc. We had several frantic calls from friends elsewhere wanting to know if we were OK. The news reporters were filming themselves standing in front of raging torrents in Grafton ( 100 miles North) and talking about Kempsey !! No wonder people have low opinions of TV news reports!!
I took a few pics -
This is the levee to the north of town looking towards the Highway which is still cut.
This is the river where it sweeps majestically round the bend. You can see the southern levee as a line of green on the right of the pic. The town is out of frame to the right.
There's not much of interest in flood pics - vast expanses of brown water, doesn't mean much unless you know the lie of the land in drier times.
Anyway, after all this crap - IT'S MY BIRTHDAY !! Sixty bloody two. I bought myself some cigars, some beers, and a new 12 foot fishin' rod with reel. I deserve it. Now I have to wait for the river to go down before I can go fishing. Funny thing - a resident of Smithtown, a small riverside village about 12 miles downstream, video'd a shark swimming up the main street !! And another resident reported catching several mullet in his garage !! Only in the country.