The weather yesterday was OK

Perhaps that should be ‘relatively OK’?  Overnight the sound of a howling wind made for a restless night for both of us: the small dog simply coiled a little tighter.  At 7am it is still howling and the rain is bucketing down as hard as I have ever seen it.  The weather forecast has just announced a flood warning for a couple of rivers in this area (including the Nambucca, which is not very far South of Coffs Harbour).  The small dog was happy to head for the back door for a toilet break, stuck her nose on the flyscreen and headed back to her blanket.

The drain at the back of the house has given up completely while there is a 2m wide torrent running down the road (in addition to what is going down the 25cm deep drain beside the road).  The block opposite (part of the Regional Park) is completely underwater.  Unfortunately as a result of the Unpleasantness At London Bridge I am not keen on taking my new (yes, it was an expensive UALB) camera out in the rain so the pix are not great.

An addition to the joys of the day is thunder.  Not continual, but occasional celestial rumbles.  Perchance this is why the lights flicker occasionally?  I am assuming it also explains why Austar put up a message about service being resumed when the bad weather goes away.

As there was a small break in the weather I took Tammie for a walk: primarily to get her bowels going since we might be leaving her home for a while today.  Everywhere is flooded and a few trees (or parts thereof) have assumed a prostrate growth form (although they aren’t going to be doing a lot growing from here on).  These two issues came together with the position of our neighbour’s garbage bins. 

It was a nice touch that the guy who mows the lawns etc swung by to check that there was no wind damage around our place.

The surf was definitely up,

but while there were black clouds and thunder rumbles to the South there was blue sky to the North.  Unfortunately our weather is currently coming from the South!

We were starting to get a tad low on a few things so went to the IGA in Woolgoolga- a small town we have stayed at in the past, just South of Mullaway.  The creek there was definitely in flood. 

After the shopping we swung out to the headland to see if there were any whales visible.  The only ones seen were those on the town water supply!

 I am intrigued about the Sikh influence in Woolgoolga.  There is a great new (opened in 1970) temple on the South end of the town 

and what looks like a decrepit old one by the main roundabout going into the CBD.  

In fact the rather decrepid one was a commercial enterprise, and not a Temple at all.From a guide to the town (by that famous author A N Other) it appears that the Sikhs came here for the banana industry.  More detail is given in the excellent book “Woolgoolga Past and Present” by Neil Yeates.  The story appears to be of Indians coming to the area for work on the banana farms (as employees not indentured folk – the first arrival was in ‘about 1939’) and then buying their own farms.  As is often the case with migrant groups, as they became successful other members of the community came to the area, both from India and elsewhere in Australia.  Woolgoolga seems to have been the last area where suitable land could be acquired.  From other comments in this book it appears that the banana industry was a classic ‘boom and bust’ scenario with the bust largely caused by monocultural over-exploitation (how unusual!).  Yeates comments that at the time of writing there were 172 banana farms in the area, of which 93 were operated by Indian families.

I have googled this book and there doesn't seem to be a secondhand copy of it on the market anywhere.  It is well out of print and as Mr Yeates is deceased no-one seems keen on reprinting it.

Shortly after getting home the sun came out so we went for a bit of a rock-comb.  This resulted in us finding several cowrie shells.   There were many other shells

and the pebbles were very shiny.  Although the odd big wave was still coming in the main trace of the awesome storm of this morning was big piles of foam.   

(After about 90 minutes the rain started again, just to keep us on our toes!  But it didn’t last long.)  During this expedition I added four species to the trip list (now 56) including Scaly-breasted Lorikeet.

For contrast here is a Rainbow Lorikeet.

I think I commented about it raining a bit today.  The total was 250.6mm: this is so far more than I have ever seen in a day it is not funny.  In old money it is close to 10 inches and round about 1/3^rd of Canberra’s annual average.