Saturday 5 February 2011

My Unusual Friday Night Adventure

Cylone Yasi on the right.  Cyclone Anthony on the left

If you live in Melbourne, you could be quite forgiven for wondering if you'd been miraculously transplated to Queensland in your sleep.  It has been very humid (90%) and warm, and sticky.  The kind of humidity where my hair curls even more and no amount of straightening is worth the effort.  Not what we expect at all, usually.  You may have heard, if you live in far flung places across the globe, that Cyclone Yasi has been bearing down on the tropical north coast of Queenland.  She has been extending her influence as far south and east as New Zealand.  And I preface this post with all that information, because it explains the reason for my quite unusual adventure.

Radar image oflLast night's weather over Melbourne

Last night's adventure began when I hopped in my car and set off down the hill to Rel's place for book club.  When I left home it was raining a bit.  But within 10 minutes I had my wipers on fast and had to concentrate quite hard to drive.  Half way through my 25 minute drive I began to think that perhaps I should've driven Dh's 4WD!  I got within 1 minute of Rel's house and didn't notice that the puddle before me was perhaps a little larger than I anticipated it could be.  The rain was just too heavy to see much of anything really.  Half way through that puddle, I began to panic.  There was soooo much water being displaced in front of my car.  The water was really deep!  And then I felt my car begin to sputter a bit.  In a panic I did a quite wise thing, in hindsight.  I turned into the nearest driveway on my side of the road....the high side!  And I sat there for a moment thinking "what do I do now?".  I certainly couldn't continue my journey.  I couldn't leave my car in some stranger's driveway....although they could go nowhere either.  So I did what all panicked wives do.  I rang my husband!  Not that he could help, but I was stuck.  And I was shaking.  So he rang a good friend, whose wife was also headed to Rel's.  And he phoned Rel to let her know what was happening.  And that I was OK.  A few minutes later, both the men turned up, wading through knee-deep water.  And the two men whose driveway I had commandeered came out.  As I stood there looking at all that water over the road (it was knee-deep on the footpath) I realised I was near a drainage reserve and it was full.  I had lived in that suburb for 10 year before moving up here and I've never seen those reserves even as much as ankle deep.

Anyway....I left my keys with the men and waded my way through the mini flood and round to Rel's where I was handed a fluffy towel and a dry shirt and book club began.  The men were finally able to drive my car around for me about an hour or so later, after the water had receeded half way and there was barely a puddle on the road as I drove home.

The rain continues quite heavily even now and my daughter and her friend have plans to head down to the suburbs to watch a movie together while I get some errands done.  I'm thinking Dh's 4WD and he as our chauffer may be our best plan.  Because men just always seem to know what to do in these circumstances.  And 3/4 pants might seem like a wise idea too.  In case more wading is imminent.

Images from bom.gov.au

8 comments:

Crunchie's Mum said...

We ventured down to Melbourne yesterday, luckily in the 4WD. It was a lovely day until the return journey. The rain bucketed down, traffic came to a standstill. It took us 30 minutes to drive 5 km. Once we turned off the highway the traffic wasn't a problem but visibility was terrible. Our original plans were to stop again but we decided to keep going before the roads flooded. What is normally a 2 hour drive became a 4 hour saga.

We heard on the radio that we had driven through some of the worst hit suburbs, 80mls of rain in 20 minutes.

At one stage we came to a tree across the road and couldn't get past. We were trying to decide how we could detour, it would have been a very long detour as it was a country road, when a young man jumped out of his car, grabbed his chainsaw and with a group of helpers cleared the tree in 10 minutes in the pouring rain. We were very grateful.

The rain is coming again today, I'm sure there will be more adventures but hopefully we will all stay safe.

Tracy said...

I'm glad you're home safe and sound Crunchie's Mum.

Just a couple of weeks ago we experienced the tree across the country road. Fortunately only a few km's from my BIL's. He brought the chainsaw and had us out in no time.

belinda said...

Hi Tracy,

Sorry to hear of your scare.

I am currently mopping up, for the third time since 8 pm last night, foot deep water. If I didn't keep so many woolen blankets around I would be really stuck right now.. as it is I think every blanket has been through the spin cycle around 20 times this morning.

Kind Regards
Belinda

Left-Handed Housewife said...

Yikes--it sounds like quite an adventure, and quite a storm! Glad you made it to Rel's safely and back home again. And men do come in handy, don't they?

xofd

Anonymous said...

Oh my goodness, scary stuff! I've been caught in flooding too and it all happens so fast. Glad you're okay Tracy. xxx

Tracy said...

Belinda, it's times like that when I wonder where the SES gets sandbags from!

Thanks for all your kind thoughts. Around our area all the creeks and very low spots are quite flooded. Fortunately we can get around these to get to where we need to go. It just takes longer.

Rel said...

Well, we were very glad you made it safely, Trac :) My DH was more than happy to come to the rescue!

Hopefully, next Book Club won't be quite as adventurous :)

Tracy said...

That would be nice. There are times when adventure is vastly overrated!