As I upload these images from the weekend it feels like it was forever ago it was Australia Day, not the Saturday that has just gone by. Usually on Australia Day we would throw a BBQ or put something in the wood fire oven and have friends over, however this Australia Day had a very different vibe….
We woke to a lot of rain, which was to be expected, so we decided to have an easy morning around the kitchen table. Our friend Cath sent us some of her delicious homemade apricot and vanilla bean jam and we chatted and grazed for the whole morning as we watched the rain pelt down…
How strange this Australia Day felt… love the Empire… if only for the souvenirs…. ** Timothy O also received a milk frother for Christmas, hence the froth…
Come the afternoon Timothy O and I were a bit bored as it was raining even harder and the winds were howling outside…we checked on the girls in their pen… they were wet…so I blow dried them… the local radio was advising people to stay off the roads and stay indoors as the weather was about to become severe…. we were both starting to get a bit ‘ansy’ irritated – we aren’t good at sitting still… so we decided to make a jug of Pimms and listen to vinlys….
…. then out came the backgammon…. and the afternoon rolled into the evening, as the electricity flickered on and off….
We rose to another crazy wet morning with wild winds… so again we sat, ate and watched the elements…. we listened to more local radio, we heard lots of sirens and it definitely started to feel very dark and dangerous out there…. we felt very grateful for our old solid house…
I decided I needed to do something productive, so out came the cook books over breakfast…. I baked for what felt forever…. hours… kneading pastry….rolling pastry… blind baking pastry….filling pastry… all while listening to annoucments of floodwaters breaking their banks up north, helicopter rescues and emergency evacuations….
Timothy O and I stayed indoors as it continued to pour with rain and listened to even more vinlys…. as soon as the chocolate tart which I had been working on was ready we got stuck in to that too….. we ate the whole weekend….
I tried to read, though I couldn’t concentrate…… the echoes of sirens was distracting me and cabin fever had set it…
Timothy O went down stairs to check on the chickens their pen had flooded over night so they were unhappily hanging out in the laundry…. and to his surprise underneath our house was starting to flood, it had never done that before… not a trickle… more like a gushing waterfall, coming in from the street (we live on a hill) and things of ours were floating about in the water….so the girls were packed up in picnic baskets and raced upstairs pronto…. we quickly dug an alternate avenue, aka a trench to redirect the flowing water into our backyard and not under our house…. the shot above doesn’t really portray the action very well… it looks rather mild… though it really wasn’t….it was pouring with rain, we couldn’t see in front of us at points and the wind was just battering… I must admit it was rather exciting…and I was secretly pleased we had something to do…..
… after yet another change of clothes (we had already run out of towels by this stage)…. I noticed the wisteria trellis lifting up and coming out of the ground, it was caught up in the crazy winds…. there was no way after all this time three slow years I was going to lose my wisteria to some crazy Queensland wild weather… no, no, no….(click here for a refresher) We tied her firmly down to the front gate with Frankie’s awning pegs….
Then yesterday we cleaned up all the mud and water and grot that washed in under our house….. I did what felt like my 82nd load of laundry and we were bemused by what an extraordinary long weekend we had.
How was yours? Hope everyone was safe.
K x
