Re: Hang in there Australia!!- tough times
It is really wet out there.
The total area underwater is absolutely enormous, and it is not a puddle, it is metres deep.
Here we have had so much rain. The ground is starting to 'stink' badly, but we can live with that.
I got a little current story for you all below about it.
Cheers
Phillip
The brother, (the Englishman) is holidaying with our Uncle in Melbourne.
He rings and says they are driving up on Boxing day arriving for dinner, and would like the wife to do her great Prawn dish (you know the one Dunaruna).
I explain they won't make it in 1 day, probably 2.5 days, so he should buy 2 air tickets and fly.
Oh No!! He tells me I don't even understand my own country.
Now here is where things really go wrong - an "Englishman, with an iphone with GPS, travelling 1,200 miles in one direction, in inland Australia". What could possibly go wrong?
He rings again confirming arrangements, and again refusing our advice, saying Uncle thinks 'it's ok'. (Uncle thinks anything is ok - he has plenty of time on his hands and loves a good road trip).
I tell him it's a bit wet up here and maybe he should fly. His answer, "I have driven London-Edinborough many-a-time in the rain".
I mean, FM! I try hard to explain what wet really means up here, but - he knows best.
Along comes Boxing day, 4pm phone rings, and I hear the wife say, 'Now isn't that just an unexpected surprise'.
They were still 300km south of Goondiwindi, so would stay there for the night and come thru in the morning.
Next day, 3pm phone goes. 'we took a short cut thru Dalby, but the road is flooded, and the police told us to get our arxes out immediately as the return bridge was about to go under too'.
We made it by about 4"!!.
So we went back and lost 7 hours. (I mean, a POM taking a short-cut in inland Australia!!)
'We are now at W. highway and told there is a 5 hr wait for a slip to be cleared'.
Then at 9pm phone goes, "got thru the slip but now the road is underwater so we are stuck in the middle of no-where".
I asked if they had a torch, food, toilet paper, shovel - nope, nothing but 2 beers.
Great, that's hao you travel about out there!
At midnight they went back to the local petrol station and asked if there was a way out, and the clerk said, 'yep, go etc etc, and chuck you iphone in the creek over there as you go thru it mate!".
At 3.30am there is knocking on the back door. "We made it".
So we make them a cup of tea and 2 ham sandwiches' each - which they woofed
Boy, were they pleased to see us.
He reckons he has never seen so much water outside a sea.
So 3 days later they are planning their trip back, with the iphone gps.
I tell then, forget that and go to this internet map, and bingo, there are 384 roads blocked, and he still wants to tell me 'that can't be correct'.
We convince them to go down the coast for maybe 6hrs, then "check at the 'Police Station' before you head inland".
They promised they would ring when they got there, but in 3 hrs time, it will be 3 days they have been travelling, either that or they are so pixxed-off with me they ain't ever going to ring me again.
