Extreme Weather

Drought Over!

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With all the praying and fasting we have done recently Heavenly Father has delivered.  We had a whopping 285mm of rain last weekend.  More than what we received in the past 9 months combined.  The dams and tanks are now full and the waterways are flowing again!  You can feel the moisture back in the air – it’s hot and sticky again, just like how summer is meant to be.

Remember our dried out creek?

Dry Creek

It was raging on Saturday!

The kids had so much fun!

 

Our dam filled up in no time

It even over flowed!!!

 

Karl posted a marker in the dam before the rain came.  It measure 1.4m above the ground.  The after picture was taken about mid day Saturday and the rain kept coming.  It would have gone way over the marker during the night…

Friday
Saturday

We’re feeling so blessed!!!

These were the rain maps for Saturday and Sunday…what a beautiful sight!

Lets break this drought!

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My family up in Queensland thought the fire situation here in the Clarence Valley had settled down since they weren’t hearing anything on the news any more.  I can tell you that it hasn’t!!!  While some communities are onto the clean up and rebuild phase, others are evacuating or cut off by fires.  This was the situation early Wednesday morning (27th Nov)

Updated Fires

A number of fires merged into one big fire and now that fire is spreading in opposite directions.  It’s gone right out to the coast on one side and further inland on the other.  All the main roads north and south have been cut off now and again, depending on the state of the fires and sometimes the only way through is to take an extra 3 1/2 hour detour inland.  Yamba, on the Coast is completely cut off.  They were told to evacuate a couple of days ago and now they’re cut off from the fires to the north, the river to the south/west and ocean to the east.  Other communities have been encircled with fires but were saved thanks to fire fighters, but they can’t get in and out to buy food because the roads are still dangerous with falling trees and sections still burning.

Our nephew Pearce works on our friends farm.  They have been preparing their property for weeks for the fires that have been burning close to them.  The fire reached them over a week ago.  They thought they had it contained, but after a scorching 37 degree day on Tuesday the fire intensified again.  The fires are right down the back of their property, not close to their house thank goodness.  But because of that, their fire isn’t a priority for the fire brigade when there are other communities in the path of fires.  They did get help from the national parks and services people though.  They came with all their equipment to back burn the mountain next to them.  This was to stop the fire from spreading closer to their house and to stop it from spreading closer to other communities closer to Grafton.  Karl went to help and got to see it all in action.  These pictures are of the back burns of the mountain.

Here are the current fire maps where you can see how much fire has ripped through the North Coast of NSW.

Map 1: NSW North Coast, Map 2: Close up of Grafton, we’re at the Binoculars

NSW North Coast
Grafton Close up, we’re at the binoculars

What can we do?  We need RAIN and lots of it! We had 1.5mls Tuesday night which was welcomed but it was just enough to dampen the ground.  Other parts of NSW have gotten a good drenching which is great…but we’re still waiting for our turn.

So the First Nation People of Australia are holding a special dance on the 1st December where all the Aboriginal groups around Australia will dance at the same time in their various locations to heal the Country.

Nation Dance Locations

MessageStickWalk

We don’t know their dances but our contribution will be to hold a special fast and prayer on the same day.  Sunday 1st December, the first day of Summer and the first Sunday of the month.  All the congregations of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in NSW have been asked to hold a special fast on that day and pray for the drought to break.  Please feel free to join in and partition our Father in Heaven to break our drought and give us relief from all these fires.  We do have rain forecast for Sunday, but we need some good consistent rain to break the drought!

I can’t wait to write a post about our raging creek!

Dry Creek

Australia is on Fire!

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The past year and half we’ve had record breaking droughts and high temperatures which are now causing record breaking fires!  This was the view from our front door last Friday as the fires intensified in the Clarence Valley

Smokey
Red sky

And this was the view from space! We live at the red dot.

Satellite picture

Satellite picture

Australia is burning all up the east coast at unprecedented levels…it’s incredible.  Friday night was horrific for residents in Nymboida, a rural community about 30kms west of us.  Fire ripped through the area so quickly and went so far it caught everyone off guard during the night.  A lot of people lost their homes and farms.  It was devastating.

These maps show how the fires spread over one day.  We live at the binocular symbol.  The map on the left was Friday and the other was Saturday. Notice how much the fire on the left of us spread…and it was pretty much overnight!

Friday Evening
Saturday Morning

Tuesday was forecast for another sizzling 39 degree day and after Friday nights fire catastrophe I was getting pretty nervous, so we intensified our preparations along with everyone else.  We can’t expect any fire fighters coming down our 5km dead-end dirt road,  especially with so many fires going on, so the boys did what the other rural folk do around here.  They made their own fire truck with 1000L IBC tanks, a water pump and hose.  The fires didn’t come our way thank goodness, but we might get some green grass growing from all the water they hosed around the place.

I have to give credit to all the firefighters and volunteers who have been working around the clock tirelessly.  Here’s some pictures that have come up on my FB feed that show the reality of the fires.  I hope I’m allowed to share these???

During times of devastation the best comes out of good people, and there’s lots of good people around.  So many people have rallied together to help, like my friend Beth who asked some family members for donations to buy drinks for the fire fighters and within a few days she has received well over $6000 (and money is still coming) from people she doesn’t even know.  She’s been buying out all the drinks and muesli bars, biscuits etc from the Grafton supermarkets daily and delivering them to the fire fighters to keep them hydrated and fueled up.

The local foodbank and other organisations have received donations of clothes and essential items to give to those that have lost their homes.  So many people have been serving and offering help in so many different ways.  It’s great to see.

The stories we’re hearing from those that have lost everything are heartbreaking.  Here’s an example of 1 family that lost their home and farm.  They run the local health food shop and just the other week we were buying Jacaranda smoothies from them at the Jacaranda festival.

Evacuation story

Evacuation story

Bush fire alert!

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Winter time is our dry season here in the Clarence Valley.  It’s also the time that a lot of farmers burn off their rubbish.  Two weeks ago we had a crazy windy weekend that fueled quite a few bush fires.   South East Australia had a wintery blast that brought snow to just 2 1/2 hours away from us…but just left us with crazy windy weather.

Our voluntary fire fighter neighbour was the first to alert us to this close encounter.  Another neighbour who is a HAM radio enthusiast gave us a real time update of what the fire fighters were doing in great detail  (they could hear all the communication going on between the fire fighters…how cool is that!)

The NSW Fires Near Me app was also a great tool to keep up with what was going on and this was the situation:  Out of control fires just 9km away in crazy windy weather and the wind was blowing the fire in our direction!

IMG_0377

The app showed the fires just 5kms away at one stage. It must have been a spot fire that the firefighters got onto straightaway.  Anyway, for quite a few days we had planes and helicopters with monsoon buckets flying over us constantly.  It was kind of reassuring…and kind of freaky at the same time.

So our fire plan is to turn on our water pump which pumps water from our dam to a huge tank at the top of our property.  The water is then gravity fed down to over 20 taps around our home and gardens.  We would turn on all the taps and have our hoses ready to pump water everywhere.  Luckily we have a large cleared area around our house so our neighbour advised us that we should have a line around our property that we would be willing to let the grass burn up to and only fight the fires within that line, otherwise we would be using all our energy and resources fighting fires all over the place.

The water pump
The old water pump
Our precious dam

Here’s our water pump that we just put in a few weeks ago.  The top right picture shows the old water pump that we used up until then.  We had to attach the old tractor to the old pump to get it going, but the old tractor kept dying on us.  We inherited the old tractor and the old water pump from the previous owners.  It worked, but the new water pump is way more efficient.

The dam water tank
Dry season

Here’s our  water tank at the top of our property…and as you can see we are very much in dry season…hopefully we’ll get some rain soon.  We’re almost looking like the outback.

As for the bush fire, it never got to us…thanks to all the firefighters.  It’s been over 2 weeks and the fire is still going, but under control and has currently burnt 5738 hectares.

Perils of shearing in the scorching heat!

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The heat today was worse than yesterday (44°C apparently).   Stafford struggled to make it through the day…and so did the poor sheep. 6 sheep died including one that died as Stafford was shearing it. It was all too much so the working day finished early today. Tomorrow the gang will start at 5:00am while it’s a bit cooler and finish earlier in the day.  Work still goes on!

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A Sizzling Sabbath

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It’s Sunday today.  We have always consistently gone to church on a Sunday. We belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  With the closest church 6 hours away back at Broken Hill we broke that consistency.

Today was an absolute sizzler at 40+ °C ! We don’t have internet access so don’t know what the actual temperature is, but according to the weather report when we left Broken Hill it was forecast for 41 degrees today (found out it was 42 when we finally got to the internet). Luckily the shearing gang had a day off, but the musterers were still mustering the sheep in the blistering heat, getting ready for tomorrow. Tomorrow is meant to be just as bad.

Time for the gratitude journal…I am grateful for air conditioning and freezers to ice our water! I’m grateful for Lewis and Renarda letting us use their caravan for the weekend (while they went back to Broken Hill)…even though the air conditioner was struggling to keep the temperature under 30 degrees and every time someone would come in and out of the caravan the temperature would go back up 4 – 8 degrees…oh and that’s right, with all the air conditioners being used in the shearing quarters, the electricity would trip out every now and then too…the old generators out here can only handle so much electricity being used at one time.  Yep it’s pretty rough out here in the outback.

IMG_1182

Mustering the sheep