After the floods

So now we are in recovery mode, following the floods last week over the whole North Coast NSW and southern Qld.

The flood on the Clarence River system (which starts in the Border ranges to the north, west to the Great Dividing Range, and south to the Dorrigo Plateau) was the fastest rising flood that I have seen here in 36 years, and was also the first major flood event that involved all the tribuartaries to the Clarence River System at one time. Whilst the peak levels were somewhat lower than the 2001 flood (450mm lower at Grafton), the damage bill is going to be astramonical due to the ferocity and rapid rate of rise in the river levels

Reports are starting to come in of people who have lost up to 150 head of cattle,and countless cases where people have lost their source of income for a substantial time, till they can get feed back in their paddocks, repair fences and other structures, andtry to return to a normal life.

Personally, I am one of the lucky ones who has had relativelly minimal losses. I had all of the fences on the lower parts of the property flattened, with the subsequent dramas of juggling cattle into 30% of the place for a week till the boundary fences could be rebuilt (about 700Meters) - still havnt had a chance to check out what is left of half of my internal fences - some of it may be totally gone- and havnt even got to see what damage has been done along the river banks

Still and all, once I had moved the cattle to high ground, the biggest worry that I had was the possibility of losing my electricity supply, as the fridge & freezer were stocked up for a weekend of the ruggies visit( + no pressure pump to put water into the house - lol )

In amongst all of this, we witnessed again the stupidity of a few teenagers who thought it was right to go and frolic in flood waters. A night in the cooler might have made an impression, as that is where they ended up - should have been a week or more though.

Life, and its strange cycles ??

I know its been a while since i posted anything, but there have been various reasons that overlapped to cause this,mainly the ruggies and trying to get the house done inside (still not finished - had a financial setback and machinery failure at the same time which lost me 6 weeks or so - lol) butalso had the odd issue at work, and a couple of nights on the fireline for good measure thrown in in the leadup to Christmas - wont even mention thefact that my main email address was chokedwith large emails for 5 weeks till I finally found a way to get them in - bloody frustrating.

Unfortunately, todays email offerings was the news that a neighbour and fellow firie had died this morning after a period of deteriating health - this will be the fourth funeral that I should attend since Christmas - but also got the news that another friend and brigade member is also not expected to live for very long - she has a tumour on an artery in her neck.

A couple of years ago saw the end of my fathers direct generation in a period of less than 18 mths, there is only an aunt by adoption, and an aunt by marraige - both a fair bit younger than the rest -left of that era of our family. This string of events did have a consequence in that there was a family gettogether organised for all of my cousins and any children etc who could get together for that weekend - were only3 who couldnt attend out of13 and a lot of the next generation was there as well.

This event was also used as an opportunity to collate the family history - a lot has been researched - but there were gaps even within the current generation (Maiden names & DOB of spouses etc) so hopefully that info is now together and we just have to fill in some of the gaps in prior generations in Australia - Noone has been able to find records on my paternal GGG Grandfather & mother other than their names an area of residence in Sthn England

Life, and its entails

I suppose that I have been a bit slack/ negative over the last couple of weeks, there were a few inputs into that happening, including being played for a dupe by a threetiming cyber friend, but that is now history. Was going through downers last post in that I couldnt achieve the goals that I was striving towards in the timeframe that I had set initially - those goals mainly being to repaint the interior of the house, and make it a place that I was not ashamed to have as a home for my children and for friends to visit - still got a way to go but Im slowly getting there.

One big upset was last Thursday (13th) coming home to a series of phonecalls from nieghbours that a young man in similar circumstances to me had hung himself in the park adjacent to my property- the ultimate form of self harm - turns out that his ex had made it that he could not go near his children through legal channels : Dont the mothers of children realise that at least 99% of the fathers of these children have deep feelings for them - its NOT just a mother thing Girls, us blokes do have feelings/ love/ affection/ etc towards our children, and to create a situation that leads to this result ultimately is a losing situation for the children - they now have NO father.

Out of sorts

The last few weeks have been a bit of turmoil in my life -have had a workplace situation finally come to boiling point ( a result of "Workchoices") that has seen me and a few of my workmates dudded for making the effort to work when we were not 100% ok- seems that we have lost our entitlements to untaken sick pay, so now if we are not feeling ok, off to the quacks and a couple of days sickies. ( given that this amounted to $800 in the Xmas pay packet, not getting it, and not being told that it was not being included led to some stuffed budgets at the least) but the chickens are going to come home to roost in the next few days - 1 bloke takes a " sickie" - and the whole place stops - noone else can do his job - rofl

Also been doing some floor sanding and painting - which has meant a lot of time just trying to clean up the mess (and loads of washing) before the kids fortnightly weekend with me.

Throw into the mix a series of (large) bills all at once, and the dreaded tax time as well, it has been an eventfull 6 weeks or so.