Soggy South Australia

Our Australian author, Steph, writes of an unusual occurrence in her part of the world - rain! - GNH

Rain to Mayhem! - Stephanie McCarthy

Well, for once dear old South Australia had a weather event never experienced before, the opposite of bush fire and drought, lasting many days and doing a lot of damage in the State which has always been known as the driest state in the driest continent in the world.

We live on a property adjoining my mother’s property in the Adelaide Hills, a total of 3 and a bit acres of bushland, horse paddocks, and an olive tree which is venerable and quite enormous.

Four days ago the weather was beautiful. Two council workers turned up at our request with a huge truck and a big scooping machine on the back which they drove up through the top paddock which was already a bit like a lake. Then they set to work for the whole morning beside the railway line clearing the rubbish and sludge out of an 8 foot deep drain ‘tomb’. The youngest guy was down the bottom with a shovel (when it became too deep for the machine) and a freight train went past. He said he thought he’d be buried alive when everything began shaking around him!

Well, two days ago Maurice and I and everyone else have never seen anything like it. Blue sky in morning, no wind. Wind picks up mid morning, sky becomes hazy, About 12 midday the rain starts falling heavily, and ground is already so waterlogged everywhere that despite big drain above top paddock now cleared and sending water rushing down like a waterfall through the massive underground pipe, there’s still too much H2O to cope, and top paddock quickly becomes a lake and carves creeks through horses’ top yard and down bank and into bottom paddock. 

M and I did inspection and despite wet-weather gear we got wet as shags but felt like kids, M with spade digging ditches and me urging him to dig more diversions and clear more blockages. We then watched as our new overflow pipe sending water into the horse drinking trough, began to work, and with the rain that fell during the afternoon we could have filled 100 troughs. Then at 4pm, just before peak hour, the whole of the State lost power. 

We switched on to battery operated radio, and the ABC was continuing thanks to their generator. People were stranded in traffic jams (no traffic lights) but even worse were those poor devils trapped in car parks and shops and in lifts and at electric train/tram stops – anywhere in fact which depended on electricity. 

Even mobile phones had restricted usage for days, and we were urged not to travel unless really necessary.  Because four pylons went down in the mid north of the State, this unprecedented power failure occurred, and the poor old Premier copped a backlash when he tried to convince listeners that the system behaved as it was meant to do (ie, shut down completely to avoid damage to electrical equipment!!) Even the wind turbines stopped. 

Only lights we had, apart from candles and lamps, were our brave little solar lights out in the garden. Some old people, and a disabled friend of mine, had no battery operated anything (Billy didn’t even have a candle or torch, so he was sitting literally and metaphorically in the dark!) But at least he had a mobile phone, so I could ring him on ours and tell him what was going on) As for my 101 year old Mum in Law and my 87 year old Mum, they don’t have mobiles, and to our concern the only candles they had were the long tall ‘wobbly’ ones – incredibly dangerous.

On the big bad day of the power outage, we were lucky and got our power back by 7.30 pm, unlike some areas which still don’t have power now, three days later! Some houses had the added horror of sewage floods because the pumping stations were overloaded. Another house burnt down because of a candle falling over.

It’s time we changed our system. Something is badly wrong. In fact I reckon it went badly wrong from the moment our State Govt sold off our essential services. They call it progress! Grrrrr! Huge questions being asked about the reliability of renewables, and some brave souls daring to mention nuclear energy.

Still windy and rainy yesterday, and gale force winds last night plus high tide. We took the two Mums down to Brighton to see the sea two days ago, and my God, despite low tide the waves were huge and as far as the eye could see dark brown in colour and with waves breaking on the horizon, and not one square inch of beach sand to be seen. 

That night, knowing a high tide was on the way, we wanted to venture down again to the coast, but the media was very adamant that this would be silly and irresponsible. Two mornings ago once again M trudged out, looking like Man from Snowy River, to free ditches and drains. Yesterday morning Mum and I mopped out her cellar which had been safeguarded, or so we thought, with numerous hessian bags.

Today, Saturday 1^st of October, we have a reprieve – no wind, and just grey skies. But in the State’s mid-north creeks and rivers everywhere have nowhere to go, and dams have burst and many country towns are inundated. It’s the beginning of a long weekend, and as people head off for holidays northwards towards our beautiful Flinders Ranges (mountains in our Outback), they will be diverted for huge distances, and those who try to cross swollen rivers will be endangering everyone. Tomorrow the rains and winds return for two days, so we brace ourselves for more difficulties to come.

In all my born days (and in all Mum and Mum-in-law’s born days) we ain’t seen nothing like this.  I’d like to pop all the climate sceptics in some of our drains, creeks and rivers right now, and maybe they’ll wake up.

 Soggy Steph (who lives in South Australia)