Rain, river and sky watch

This last week everyone has been watching the sky - you see last Tuesday we experienced our first 'Mango Rain'.

At first we were quite mesmerized by the storm - this is the first rain we have seen in nearly 4 months!  However when we woke the next morning it was still drizzling.  Mango Rain is supposedly meant to be only an afternoon storm. 

Arriving to school under an umbrella, the question everyone was asking the locals was 'is this Mango Rain or the Wet Season?'  As it continued to drizzle throughout the day the group of us driving out to Cairns the next weekend became increasingly worried.

The rain thankfully stopped that afternoon, although this did not completely settle our minds as it continued to rain around the nth of the state and the rives started to rise.  Locals on their way back from Cairns got stuck between Chillagoe and Kowie.  The reports trickling through regarding the state of the road and rivers were as varied as the colours in a rainbow, as is often they case in Kowie. 

On Friday morning one of our teachers tried to drive out with one of the local contractors.  We heard nothing all day until they returned that afternoon after having sat about 40ks out of town waiting and hoping the first river would drop enough to get through.  That afternoon we drove out to have a look.

The road was not in the best condition, there were parts that were quite ripped up from the heavy trucks coming through and there were a couple of small water crossings that we got across easy enough.  Then we came to this......

Not the crossing that made them turn back!!  We had to get around/through this.



We decided to go round not through and made it without any drama.  We continued along for another couple of km's then came to a halt at this usual trickle of a crossing that had risen to 2m's within a couple of days.

We headed back fairly confident that as long as the rain stayed away our trip to Cairns would still be on the cards.  At the end of a lazy Sunday we decided to drive out and check out the road situation...


 

This looked promising

Although with parts of the road looking like this it will definitely
be a slower trip then usual.

 
So far so good - there has been no more rain and hopefully it stays away for at least another week so that we can drive to and from Cairns without any issues.  The trip is our last chance to stock up for the impending wet season with pretty much everything we need until June next year.  So the next few days we will be busy writing all sorts of lists so that we hopefully don't forget anything to important!!