When trouble threatens, one of the perks of living in a pretty isolated part of the world is having the time, space and freedom to look after yourself.
To make your own arrangements, and if you're well enough prepared you can usually ride out a storm.
Fingers crossed.
The forecast was for rain, possibly with hail, thunder, lightning, and damaging winds.
We looked at it and weighed up a few things. How bad would it be? Was our isolation a good thing? What were we stuck with?
We know, for example, that with our place running solar power and perched on top of a hill, a lightning strike would leave us in the dark quick smart.
And, the last steep bit of track up to the home paddock, never sealed, occasionally gives us grief when we cop enough rain to make a wash-away.
Oh, and the creek, that 90-odd kilometre string of puddles along which our place fronts about a kilometre, hasn't flooded in a long time.
When it does, the poor buggers up the valley only have one way to access their properties or get into town, and that's across our paddocks and up or down the track.
Yes, the 'sunburnt country' that Dorothea McKellar loved has been seeing much more drought than flooding rains. Lots of rain (exactly when did such a thing start being called a 'rain event'?) has hardly been a problem anywhere in Oz recently.
But now a super storm was brewing, and all that was about to change.
An old bloke we know living nearby reckoned it would bypass us, or not really affect us badly. He's pretty canny and has seen good times and bad.
Was his 'she'll be right' attitude based more on hope than science?
A DIFFERENT type of STORM
Everyone had read the forecasts, seen all the build-up, prepared themselves, or not, and now it's happened.
The world, not just our neck of the woods, has been hit by a Category 5 super storm. We're not talking about the weather, bad or otherwise.
Some people thought it wouldn't reach us, or that it wouldn't have too dramatic an effect. Nope, we're copping it. Tough times indeed.
But unlike the weather, something is being done about it. Mostly this battle is bringing out the best in people, and as luck would have it we're finding ourselves with new peacetime heroes.
Perhaps, as our old neighbour would see it, now is a good time to remember that optimism is contagious too.
- Ross and Gemma Pride have split their time between Sydney and Billagal, Mudgee, since 2001.
