It's a hard rain

The heavy rains are moving south. Now Brisbane is expecting a deluge, getting out the sandbags. Here in Sydney we’ve had a wet summer, as was predicted, but nothing remotely like Queensland’s catastrophe. Queensland always feels like another country, but through Kukka we learned something of the lie of the land around Bundaberg. When Bundaberg was the first Queensland city to be flooded just before New Year we thought immediately of our sailing friends George and Kathleen who had left their beautiful wooden boat Kalalau moored at the mid-town marina. Photos on the internet showed that when the Burnett river rose to its highest level in 50 years nothing was left of the marina,  so when George and Kathleen arrived back in Australia on 2 January they had good reason to fear that they had lost their boat.

Over the past week they’ve kept us in touch with their story. It has a happy ending. Kalalau is not among the 25 or 30 boats which have disappeared without a trace from Bundaberg, some taken out to sea, others no doubt on the bottom of the river. Nor was she half sunk, sitting on a rock, or marooned in a sugar cane-field. She washed up among the mangroves on an island in the river and in the last couple of days has been salvaged by an expert local crew. Here she is being dragged through the mud and back into her element. She not only floated, but her marvelous teak hull was tight. Hallelujah, wrote George.  No water in the bilges! She looks like a battle-scarred veteran, they say, but nothing, fingers crossed, which can’t be repaired further down the track. I hope we meet Kalalau one day again on the water. That will be a precious moment. 

This morning’s news has Toowoomba, just west of Brisbane, knocked out by a violent flash flood.  People have drowned, swept from their cars and their houses. I watched a You Tube video of a solid young man in a singlet and shorts hanging on for dear life to a wire netting fence. A couple of rescue workers got to him, pinned him against the fence and stopped him from being pulled under the ugly, angry, dirty water. He looked stunned when they finally escorted him to safe ground. He was in town somewhere, somewhere normally hard and dry (until very recently Toowoomba was in drought). Was he driving his car when he saw the water coming for him? Was it a rainstorm that fell out of the sky, or did the river – what’s the name of the river near Toowoomba? – take him from behind like a surprise cavalcade? There’s another image of a white van upended and being pulled along like a bath toy on a body of water moving so fast it is throwing up a wake as it rushes around power poles and other obstacles. Such weird things are happening in Australia this summer, things you just don’t expect.

Quiet time

The calmness which has settled over our corner of the world since Boxing Day is almost as soothing as being afloat. Morning traffic along Darling Street is non-existent till nine or even ten o’clock. The drunks, whose pavement antics are the price we pay for living so close to restaurants and a pub with 2 am closing, have gone somewhere else to disturb the peace in the early hours. Many small shops are shut and we who haven’t left town are none the worse for it. It feels like Sundays used to before they became just like every other day.

You’d think by now I’d be used to idling, to the feel of a day with no buses to catch, no traffic jams to fume about, no deadlines to meet, no need to stress or ever go into over-drive. I am, but still there’s something extra pleasant about these in-between days, the days which bridge the end of one commercial year and the beginning of another. Discounting the frenzy which is New Year’s Eve in Sydney, when the fireworks draw big crowds to the parks around Balmain’s foreshore, these are days without many other people in them, which move slowly and gently and when nothing seems urgent. They resist organization and are open to suggestion. As I say, almost like cruising.

To make up for the absence of the sea and the horizon, I have a kitchen and a garden. Our tomatoes are ripening slowly and the beans and capsicums are even slower off the mark, but we do have a whole bed of lettuce and other green leaves plus basil, mint, parsley, chives etc  to make into salads to go with the ham (still the ham!). I cooked up a batch of apricot jam with fruit leftover from Christmas Day’s poaching. There’s a box of cherries in the fridge which seems bottomless. We’ve barely touched the Christmas cake yet, but where, I asked myself, could be the harm in assembling another batch of Christmas mince pies before the season for eating them is declared over? 

Panzanella is easy summer food - bread soaked in vinegar and mixed with tomatoes, basil, red onions, oil and s&p

Mini Christmas mince pies for snacking with a brew (tea, that is)

 About three days ago we hung a handsome barometer (my Christmas present from Alex)  in a spot where I can check it regularly. Because we've had a run of golden weather,  I didn’t worry at first when the needle was unusually steady. But yesterday a cool change pushed through, bringing heavy rain with thunder and lightning. The barometer’s needle still didn’t budge. I felt a bit stormy myself.

As soon as the (reputable) shop where Alex bought it re-opens we’ll be straight over to return it. Suddenly I’m a consumer with an urgent mission. Pity. A week of Sundays is too short. 

There are other brews in the house