Hi all,
Thanks to all who replied to the last post. Nothing but chit chat this time. Thought I'd start a new one as we have slipped of the first page now. I laughed at your comment Sandy & Steve! Years and year's back when one of the games were on we had another huge wild fire and just stopped it at the
airstrip a couple of km from the house. It took out half the North
Kimberley BUT very luckily we got some unexpected storms almost right after.
For weeks the fires didn't rate a mention as they had other news. By this time we had some nice green pick returning from the rain and things looked so much better. Suddenly the media needed news and hit on the fires, the phone went from 5 am to 10 pm. They wanted to know if I was looking at black devastation etc. I explained it was long gone & how lucky we had been with rain and how we had stopped it a couple of km away so NO were never in danger and NO it couldn't be seen from the house etc etc. I even said that I hoped they were not going to print any rubbish as I have been caught so many times I am wary of newspaper reporters.
The headline read,
Stricken Pastoralist watches blaze approach.
No joke, it was amazing, like it was happening that very day, never let the truth get in the way of a good story. Just because of where we live we have been involved several times with news in some form or another and honestly having known the real story then read the paper and what was in the paper was such a load of garbage that we mostly won't talk to them anymore.
Has made me a tad cynical about most things I read in the news as if it's all as far off base as what we were involved in, then most is a load of rubbish!
Images like they put on the TV last night happen every wet season. Yes
Wyndham did cop it heavy this time but I don't think they got as much over the two days as fell on
Emma Gorge last year when it got washed down the creek. We have had the Drysdale 3 km wide here and the
homestead is 1.6 km from the river and it has come up to the door of the staff quarters which is only 150m behind the
homestead. It isn't flat ground either we are up quite a slope so that is huge, this time it fell where people could get footage of it, so much more interesting!
What causes the most damage and makes the largest floods is when it falls real fast like their over 200 mm in one day stuff. We personally have had a good wet out here in the sense that most days it wasn't huge rain so it had time to soak in a bit, not just all run off.
The story goes that when they built this place they arrived with the building materials went down to the nice bank above the river and started to unload the gear, luckily someone looked up and saw a log jammed almost in the top of one of the trees and they decided that right there was perhaps not a good place to build!
This time we haven't had any of those huge in one day falls so even though it is flooded the river isn't as high as we have seen it several other times, so yes thanks we are fine, no problems at all.
Be nice if the mail plane makes it today though, it couldn't make it last Friday and daughter who was on her way
home has been stuck in town for a week and also we could do with some fresh foodstuff. Got plenty to eat, just things like a lettuce would be handy.
It has left to do the run this morning but which
places it can land at or not will depend upon if we happen to be getting a storm when he gets near us or not. Daughter will not be happy after waiting the week if he gets within 50 km of us and has to pass on to the next place and miss us! She would have to do the whole run all the way round the North Kimberely back to
Kununurra and then wait till Friday for the next chance. It is clearer today but we are still getting passing bands of rain.
I am sorry you have had such a nasty one Ruth, we needed this badly after last year as even though we did get rain it wasn't nearly enough as all the plants and underground springs etc are all attuned to & need the large quantity we normally get. If we get 2 or 3 very small wets in a row all
the springs etc stop flowing and the good long wet will help recovery after the fires as
well. I feel for you as it is quite heartbreaking when you lose trees as they take so long to replace! We have a good
bore now but in the early days we only pumped from the river and on a dry year we'd be left with a 15 km long bed of just sand all near the
homestead.
John would dig a hole in the sand and we'd get seepage into the hole, then have to pump the little we could get and filter the dirty sludge so we could drink it. Was terrible and on those years I'd lose almost all my garden as there wasn't enough water for us, never mind the garden.
We have so much now compared to 20 years back, better power, better water,. A phone and pop on the net and talk to people in an instant. When we came here there were no phones RFDS radio only and you were limited to 3 min calls and anyone with a radio from almost Hedland into the NT could here every word said. Due to the huge number of people waiting to make calls they gave one warning your 3 mins was almost up then if you didn't sign off they simply flicked the switch and just cut your call off !
I am glad I experienced it though, it was the end of an era when the local radio base closed. Even though you may have never met some other people in the area you still ' knew ' of them and who they were because of the radio.
The School of the Air kids news used to be a classic, out of the mouths of babes, used to happen all the time. I remember one little boy gave a detailed description of how he went with Dad to get a killer (a beast for station meat). They went down this track, over a
hill, through a hole in a fence, down a valley by a creek etc etc. Only problem was the
young man just gave a detailed account heard by all and sundry of how Dad snuck in and pinched the animal from the next door station !
Enough gossip, must work, cheers, Anne