Of all the sounds I’ve heard this week, one above all others is the most pleasing.
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It is of course the sound of rain – though the smell of rain after a long period of warm weather, or petrichor, to give it its lovely poetic name is a nice sensation too.
After a long and mostly dry summer, Mount Isa got its first decent falls on Friday night and Saturday morning of Australia Day, with 7.6mm registered at the airport and better falls in outlying areas.
That was follow by 2.0mm on Tuesday, 8.0mm on Wednesday and 5.0mm (and counting as I write) on Thursday, the last day of the month.
Those totals are hardly going to fill up the local lakes but with the monsoon seemingly in full swing further east they are encouraging and hopefully will lead to delightfully wet February in these parts.
The lake levels at Moondarra and Julius are remarkably similar to what they were at the same time last year but good drenchings at the end of February 2018 saw them double in capacity almost overnight so there is good reason to believe a similar outcome is in store in 2019.
Elsewhere there are much bigger falls.
Julia Creek Airport has recorded 102.4mm since Monday January 28.
On Wednesday the Landsborough Highway was closed between Cloncurry and McKinlay because of floodwaters cutting the road at Nora Creek and a day later the Flinders Hwy between Cloncurry and Julia Creek was closed due to flooding at Canal Creek.
These are temporary annoyances but are matters of joy because it means a lot of drought-busting rain has fallen.
Properties in the Winton, Richmond, Julia Creek and Hughenden areas are also among those to benefited from the wet season rain this week.
John Paynter from Wando Station 50 km east of Winton said he had received his best rain since March last year with 55mm to January 30 and still raining at the time we spoke to him.
Boulia Shire too has seen some wild weather in recent days ranging from sandstorms to flooded creeks.
Perhaps thinking of Dorothy McKellar’s “droughts and flooding rains”, Boulia Mayor Rick Britton is stoic about it. “It’s part and parcel of where we live,” he said. Amen to that. – Derek Barry
Derek Barry
Editor of the North West Star Mount Isa since January 2016. Prior to that, an editor at several regional southern Queensland newspapers. Passionate about telling local stories. Comes with a strange accent to due an Irish accident of birth.
Editor of the North West Star Mount Isa since January 2016. Prior to that, an editor at several regional southern Queensland newspapers. Passionate about telling local stories. Comes with a strange accent to due an Irish accident of birth.
