Archive for October 28th, 2007
Water from above
October 28, 2007It rained here last week. Gloriously. Most of a night. Maybe two inches in all, here in Brisbane.
Since there were no banner headlines in the papers the next day, I presume it didn’t rain much in central or western Queensland where the catchment areas for our dangerously low reservoirs are located, but at least it rained here, near the coast, proving that it is still possible for moisture to fall from the sky.
There was lightening and thunder, too, lots of it. I got up out of bed, poured myself a small brandy, and watched and listened for half an hour. Without turning on any lights, I opened the front door and breathed in the smell of newly wet dirt.
A recent magazine article by Graeme Blundell, about television travel shows, praised Michael Palin’s 1989 film “Around the World in 80 Days” and recalled a story Palin told after returning to London at the end of the filming.
“I’ve just been around the world,” he said to a man who was giving him a ride home. “Oh, yeah?” the man replied. Then he said, “It looks like rain.”
I think Palin read this response as an indication of how little fellow Londoners cared about travel and/or the rest of the world, but it seems to me there’s another possibility. Maybe there was a drought in progress, such as there still is here.
When reservoirs get below 20 percent people begin to focus on things that matter most and – at least in this part of Australia these days – the possibility of rain trumps nearly everything else. — Bob