View from Cathal's Garden

  View from Cathal's garden 
  Originally uploaded by ganching1

I was last here in January 2006.  My father's brother and his wife live in the Hunter Valley.  In this photograph you can't actually see the Hunter river but it is just a field or so away from their house.

When I visited, my aunts took me out for the day to Newcastle.  We ate lunch and went for a stroll along the broadway. Later my aunt Eileen took us to a shopping mall in Hamilton to pick up my cousin.  In a department store she introduced me to a youngish Irish woman who worked there and within about two seconds we'd worked out that she was the sister of a friend of my sister.

When we got home my uncle told us that during the day a few drops of rain had fallen.  This was of great interest to every one apart from me as I didn't realise until afterwards the significance of rain falling in a drought area.  I had noticed though that everything was brown and the grass made a crunchy noise when you walked on it.

My cousin has a small farm near her parents and the water used for irrigation comes out of the Hunter river via an electric pump. While I was staying there my uncle would go every few hours and check to make sure that the pump was still working and that it hadn't been stolen.  The way he had to be involved in everything reminded me very strongly of my father.

A few days before I'd been in Melbourne where I'd met an elderly woman on the bus coming from the airport. She was extremely talkative and an avid lone traveller who enjoyed talking to strangers.  We spent the whole journey into Melbourne chatting.  I told her that later in my holiday I was going to visit relatives near Maitland and she told me that she'd spent a few weeks there in 1955 as a volunteer with a Catholic youth group. At the time the whole town was devastated by floods and several people had died.   When we got into Melbourne she suddenly remembered  that she had a suitcase with her when she set off.  All the time she'd been chatting to me her suitcase was sailing round on the luggage carousel - unclaimed.

I only realised tonight that this area is once again really badly flooded and no doubt my family must be affected by it.  Hopefully it will be nothing more serious than power cuts.  I am working on the basis that no news is good news.

Comments

[Nelly]

Try phoning Aunt M. She knows everything.

[fifi]

A lovely part of the world. Last time I was there I tried a damn fine imitation of "The Man From Snowy River" on somebody elses very fine horse. I could not walk for near a week.

The whole Hunter looks very dire right now.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/hunter-village-totally-cut-off/2007/06/11/1181414174800.html

if you can paste that, it will give you a look. ( I am too much of an idiot to know how to create a link. Sorry)
It were crunchy grass whenever I was there too.
Best of luck to Cathals property.

[fifi]

oh me god, it linked all by itself.

[ganching]

It's clever like that.

I phoned my mum earlier today but no-one has heard anything from them. The worst that can have happened is that their house has been damaged.
They have been flooded before because my uncle tells a story of how some ladies of a certain age were visiting them from norn iron and in order to get to the house they had to wade through the river. There is one road into their property and it crosses the Hudson. When I was there it was little more than a stream.

I don't really understand flooding even though I have sat through talks on flood risk assessments. A friend of mine was flooded out last year when there was an almighty downpour in one little corner of London only. The rest of us only had a wee skiff of rain. Nature is a strange old thing.