OT: A little local flooding to report

[Guest guest]

Lismore is turning on a Flood today after all the cyclonic rain/wind of the last 2 days added to the already saturated ground from the preceeding 'Big Wet' Season. Hubby is having an enforced day off work...downtown Lismore is empty waiting to see if the Flood Levee breaks its banks.....it'll go very close.

I had to stay up until about 2 am this morning keeping watch on my 3 old fireplaces that just run with water when we get this sort of weather. I lay newspapers on the bottom bricks & have several litter trays lined up on a rigged up scaffolding inside ...I emptied 6 buckets of water from them last night! I'm nearly run out of old newspapers too so the rain had better CEASE forthwith!

It's a delicate decanting process ...I tip each litter tray, one at a time into the big bucket....fun with one hand......huiby had already gone to bed when the BIG rain came thundering in..he was sound asleep!

By some miracle the rain just STOPPED at about 1 am.....I stayed up cleaning up & waiting to see if it was going to start up again...then I decided to go for a walk down to the nearby 24 hour Petrol Station to stock up on milk...a flood is fine but that means all the shops are closed & a gal can't run out of MILK!

The whole town was abuzz....flood sirens going..people being evacuated from the lowest part of the town....cars, trucks..everyone heading into their businesses to pack up stock....it all gets quite exciting..lots of adrenlalin in the air. This is the very first time I haven't had to be one of those people helping pack up my own place of work! It's not often that this process has to happen during the night.

Like all of our Coastal River towns, Lismore is well practised at the art of floods...many towns south of us will be doing the same exercise over the next few days.

If the Levee breaks its banks we'll get flood water in our back yard & perhaps under the house..won't the puppies love THAT!

Gosh we have such a lot of natural excitement Downunder.....

If you Google ABC Radio Lismore NSW you can have a squizzy at some flood piccies & the action...there's a lot of noise from TV Journos flying overhead in helicopters..some with Pollies on Board all coming up to show they DO know we exist here in the Far North of the State & that they really Do care....great photo opportunities for them for the evening news! Fat chance we'll believe 'em especially since they've just announced last week that 400 jobs are being axed from our Area Health Services across our region!

Cheers from your In-the Field Reporter..

GIO