It’s dirty business this weather stuff – when they forecast rain and all you get is well, driven crazy. Photo: Sally Hopman.
It’s back. That dust that follows you everywhere, moving in on you and wherever you are, like a wish-they-were-more-distant relative. That one time when you almost think it wouldn’t be a waste of water to wash your car if only to get rid of the rude words fingered all over the back of it.
Thanks to the 134.7 raindrops – I’ll bet my umbrella on it because they fell slowly enough to count individually earlier this week – the back of my car is now so dirty I could clean up big on it.
The rain gauge on the back fence is plastered, and not in a good way. The dirt, formerly known as dust, was so dry it cracked. I know how it feels.
Yep, it’s stopped raining again. Brown is the new green, people lucky enough to have stored feed for times just like this are the only ones almost smiling. Biscuits of hay that hobby farmers once treated their poddies to, now cost almost as much as a truckload of Tim Tams.
Not only has it stopped raining, but Her Upstairs has started dumping on us again – and not in a good way. She’s such a tease. You know the sort of thing, when the sky darkens, when the clouds gather, when you seriously consider claiming the office umbrella really is yours, yep, that time. HU lets out a thunderish roar, lets fly with 134.7 drops and claims to rain all over us – just like those fancy visitors we had a week or so ago.
Nope. Within seconds it stops, hotly, and a blue sky appears from nowhere – all you can do is sweat the big stuff.
That was until earlier this week when I, foolishly, thought money could not buy happiness. I was so wrong.
I was interviewing a man about the sale of his family property – a 3200-hectare (about 8000 acres in the old money) slice of paradise in the Yass Valley – when he happened to mention it had a dam in almost every paddock.
Separately, the man, his wife and the real estate agent had spent some time mentioning all the home had to offer and it did – a rare old family property on some great country that had only ever been on the market twice before – and one of those times was by the same family who had it on the market now.
Six bedrooms, a ballroom that they’d made into a master bedroom complete with ensuite where the stage was, even a self-contained unit under the house where an original jail stood – apparently the property was a popular stopping-off point for Cobb and Co – and bushrangers. It even had a famous next door neighbour – that man of many words, Banjo Paterson.
It was a rarity of a place. Not chopped up into 3.5 million serviced aparments, it oozed history from its bluestone walls to its old timber floors.
But a dam in almost every paddock? Now that’s living in high grass. Literally.
Sure the property was also on just about every creek and river on the map, but the idea of a dam everywhere else can’t but help float your lilo.
Can’t you see the sheep gambolling on which dam they should splash into on what day? What the flock, they may well say, we’ll make a splash everywhere.
Declaration: After a brief but animated whip-round involving family, friends and perfect strangers who looked like they had a bit of coin, your author failed to secure the $30 million needed to buy said property, Mylora. Didn’t even come close, dam it.
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