Come rain, hail and shine.
Words Eliza Fessey
I’VE weathered my fair share of storms, but I’ll always remember the first time I saw rain.
I was eight years old or thereabouts, living near Brewarrina, on the black soil plains. My family’s property was dusty and dry and we were deep in the Millennium Drought.
I knew almost no different. Drought had been my reality since my first conscious thought, and shovelling those thick white lines of cottonseed out onto the claypan was what I thought every mum and dad must do.
The day I’ll remember forever started with Dad looking up at the sky.
“Black clouds in the east,” he said to my mother, who looked at him quizzically, lips pursed, eyes scanning the sky.
Tools were downed, and my sister and I were summoned. Kids in the back of the ute; first gear, second, third.
We were on our way to see The Storm.
I held on tight to the bar behind the cab, standing up, looking over the side. I didn’t know what I was looking for exactly, but it found us soon enough.
The Storm had rolled in over the plain, and we’d barely made it out of the house paddock when the strangest thing began to fall from the sky.
Was it water? Was it ice?
My sister and I looked at each other, neither of us quite sure. Little spots turned into icy slaps falling from the sky, and suddenly I was scared.
The ute stopped. We clambered into the cab. “That’s hail,” Mum said. And then it really began to fall.
Emma in the middle, me on Mum’s lap; the hail thumping on the roof of the ute. We started sliding. Dad started laughing.
This must be good, I thought.
More sliding along the black soil. Not so good. The Storm was not letting up. Suddenly, a thought bubbled from nowhere, and I panicked. “Dad – the dogs.” Straight back to the shed, we pulled up, jumped out. There was a pool of water around the dog kennels, all six of them, and our kelpies were sitting, stranded, on top of their 44-gallon drums.
Dad’s our hero, always. He grabbed a woolpack for cover and ran out. Hail thumping, heavens opening. One by one, he managed to let each dog off its chain.
Confused and sodden, all six dogs raced in under the shed. Dad followed, and all of a sudden we were all safe, just sitting there smiling, watching the hail turn into rain. Four inches in the gauge. Smiles a mile wide, and water as far as the eye could see.
We went and rolled in the mud. Mum didn’t care.
After a bath, half-full instead of half-empty, the four of us sat out on the verandah, sipping a little champagne out of Nana’s best crystal flutes.
To hell with the fact I was only eight years old – it had bloody rained.
