I forgot I had these photos on the camera! Our annual quilting retreat was held on a very stormy weekend in September (we usually have GORGEOUS springtime weather). The drive down for me on the Friday morning was a white knuckle one for about 40 km or more (Boyanup to Kirup, for those familiar with the south-west of Western Australia) as the rain was super heavy and the wind was howling. It took me 90+ minutes to do a drive that normally takes about 75 minutes.
Here’s a photo from the car of the weather up ahead (I was north of Dardanup at this stage, so it hadn’t hit with a vengeance — yet…):
And between Dardanup and Boyanup there’s a patch on the road where you can see that the dairy cows cross regularly. In all the years I’ve travelled on that road, I’ve never seen the cows crossing, but they were crossing that Friday morning 😉 It was a big herd, too. The farmer had on wet weather gear but he was soaked — and splashed with all manner of cow excrement…
We had raging storms all Saturday and Sunday too, and on Sunday night, the last night of our retreat, the power went out about 11 pm. So we all went to bed, fully expecting the power to be back on the next morning. It wasn’t. Fortunately the people we were staying with had a wood tile fire linked into their hot water system, and a manual switch to switch over to town water from their usual rainwater tank, so the girls heading back to Perth got to have a shower next morning.
The power was out for our hosts (and their town and about four other surrounding towns) for well over 60 hours. Poor buggers.
Rhonda Bracey: At Random 