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