[I’d like to state at the very beginning of this post that I am having a small whine. I, unlike Queenslanders who have been affected by the floods, have a roof over my head and haven’t lost family, friends, belongings, pets, or my house. If you want to donate to the Queensland flood relief fund go here]
For the past few days, I haven’t been living in Melbourne, well I have, I’ve been living back in the tropics. The warm nights and warm days, with very high humidity have put me in mind of my time on Christmas Island versus living in Melbourne. My tiles are covered in condensation, meaning we have towels all over the place, my carpet is damp (and smells of wet sheep or carpet depending on your point of view) and the humidity level inside the house are currently at 98% (only slightly below being immersed in water (this is a joke)).
My back garden (have I mentioned that we’re situated on clay soil?) has taken as much water in as it can, and has flooded into the garage, so for an hour after I returned from the gym we bailed out the back yard, moved stuff that shouldn’t get wet in the garage higher, tried to seal the garage against further inundation, swept excess water from the garage, and then bought cat litter for the poor kittens who don’t want to go to the toilet in a lake.
This La Niña, although successfully having broke the drought for much of Australia, has been incredibly destructive. My parents have had their property flooded twice, and this time they’ve evacuated because the reservoir upstream from them is above capacity and the Government is concerned about downstream residents. I’m wondering how many of us want the drought back.