I live in a cool area in the eastern states of Australia because I dislike the heat, so I welcomed the rain over the Christmas period rather than grumbled at the lack of sunshine. As I sit here this morning, though, I can't take pleasure in the patter of rain on the leaves outside when over 200,000 of our Queensland neighbours are experiencing floods and an incredible loss of homes, stock and even lives.
In February 2009 our community experienced Black Saturday — a disasterous bushfire period where 173 lives were lost. Hard to believe that lives are being lost in January 2011 in floods. What an extreme country we live in.
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"I love an sunburnt country -a land of sweeping plains; of rugged mountain ranges, of droughts and flooding rains. I love her far horizon, I love her jewel sea, her beuaty, and her terror - the wide, brown land for me." ("My Country", published as "Core of my Heart", 1908) Dorothea MacKellar certainly got it right. Written over 100 years ago, yet I can't get it out of my head at the moment.
I CAN spell it. Beauty.
I know. Had afternoon tea with a couple of octogenarians yesterday and made me realise that we are just visitors here - nature will continue to do what it will, heedless of human boundaries.
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