Dry season, what dry season?

It is nominally well into the dry season according to climate statistics.  What you expect is climate, however, what you get is weather.  And the far north coast has been getting heaps more rain than normal, delivered down the coast in showers, and up at Possum Valley on top of the dividing range as mist, drizzle and showers.

 

The dour Scottish are familiar with such weather and would say “och aye, it’s dreich and it’s drear”.  (dreich – tedious, wearisome, long. To get the pronunciation right, try and spit as you say it).  The easy-going Irish might say “to be sure it’s a fine soft day”.  The optimistic Yorkshire man after a month in his gumboots would say “eeeh lad, might brighten up yet”.  Your kindly host is saying “enough already Hughie”.  I could use a few days of sunshine.

The silver lining as they say, is that the slow steady rain adds to the water table having time to soak in.  A lot of the rain this wet season has been intense and short causing floods and very quick run-off and hardly adding to the water table.

There are technical divisions of rainforest to do with when and how the rain arrives.  You will not be surprised to learn that Possum Valley is ‘cloud forest’ and in some months gets up to half its rainfall from ‘cloud stripping’  as the moisture settles on the all the dense foliage and gently drips down.

The birds and animals are less visible and active when it is wet.  They must go about their daily business to survive, but seem to forego the social activities.  The snakes just disappear and sulk until the sun comes out to get them moving.  There are a few creatures that just love this weather.  I am sad to report that one of the is leeches.  This is party time for them.  They are small harmless, don’t attack you in the house (to dry to survive), and don’t carry diseases like mosquitos.  It is strange to me that despite being the worldwide scourge of humankind since we were dragging our knuckles across African savanna and cause the death of millions every year, people are more tolerant of them than leeches.   The term for doctor used to be ‘leech’, and they were used as the chief remedy.  They still are used in western medicine particularly after plastic surgery for the removal of blood clots and infected material.  Heck, they even come with built-in anesthetic and anti-coagulant.

The other species that revels in the rain is of course my ducks.  The platypus are totally indifferent to the rain.

I am quite sure bedraggled scrub turkeys get rather fed up when they come and stand on the patio next to the tractor and just stand there doing nothing, just sheltering from the rain.  After an extended period of rain, the turkeys sunbathe.  They fling themselves on the ground on one side and throw a wing into the air.  Then roast the other side.  I think they need the sunshine to control mites or similar rather than fancy a tan.

In other news, my eldest daughter, partner and 1 yo son have bought a 250 acre grazing farm just down the road.  A mere 15 kms away.  A lovely rolling property right on the boundary between rainforest and wet schlorephyl.  (I can see that is wrong, but not in spell check).  That is about 1185 kms closer than they have been for the last few years.  They will probably move in about xmas.  I have been put on notice that grandfatherly duties such as child minding are expected.  My youngest daughter in Darwin now in the ‘beached whale’ stage of producing another child to add to the family (last 4 weeks).  Added to the energetic 2 yo she has now, she wont have to get up in the morning thinking “now what am I going to do today?”  The day will start abruptly, then just keep happening.  The art of coping overtakes the discipline of planning.

I watch with amazement from my refuge of peace, as insanity grips the planet.  The latest round of brinksmanship as Greece and the EU dare each other to collapse the European financial system and perhaps the teetering world economy.  ” Greek bailout #7?”  Don’t think so, as the Greek haven’t seen a cent, euro, drachma.  The bailouts went straight to the creditors, other European banks.  A financial shell game to keep the party going.  The sooner the Greeks say “bugger off and put those debts where the sun don’t shine” the better.  I do of course mean a deep vault in Switzerland.

More locally, the Abbot ploy of paying people smugglers to turn around and take them back beggars belief.  Now I do admit that Abbot at the last election promised to promote new industries, I just didn’t expect them to be in Indonesia.  What a terrific business model!  The smuggler sets out with a boatload of people who have paid them, go the shortest distance till they bump into an Aussie patrol boat, collect more money and home in time for dinner.  Get paid both ways!  I can see Indonesian fishermen with poor catches inviting the whole village onto his boat, BBQ provided, urgently seeking our intrepid ‘border patrol’, taking the handout as the Aussie crew who wouldn’t know a Rohinga from a Rwandan from a refugee.  It is likely that payments breach international law and domestic law prohibiting the aiding people smugglers.

Happy winter solstice, and may your days get longer and brighter.  I’m on pretty safe ground there.