Hmmmm strange weather everywhere! Sorry to hear it’s still really hot there. I wonder how the plants and animals are adapting to these strange weather patterns.It's 87° outside. Sheesh. I had to stop working in the yard and come indoors and have some ice cream.
I'll clean the bathroom and do some vacuuming instead but I'm already behind on my list of projects to get done before the Hell Months return!
Serious jealousy hereView attachment 3988453
Fall is our spring. Check out these beautiful lemons on my friend's tree right now. There are over 100 on that one tree alone. We're trading fresh eggs for fresh lemons.
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We call them Rodneys
Friday 15th of November 7.40a.m. another grey day, drizzle so light it's more like mist. 13 / 20.4kph WSW, Hg 62%, 16.6C / 61.9F top of 21C / 70F. Shower or two. Marine wind warning.
Moon is 98.5%
Farmers stockpile supplies, food ahead of wet season and months of isolation
1 hour 56 mins ago
Greg and Carol Ryan say they have no regrets about their life at Green Hills Station. (ABC News: Jessica Black)
Greg and Carol Ryan have weathered 38 years living on the wrong side of the river.
Green Hills Cattle Station is "smack bang" between Cairns and Karumba in the Gulf Savannah and is cleaved in two by the Gilbert River.
"We've had a few little close shaves with the river. It's a lot fiercer and a lot stronger than what you think," Carol says.
The Gilbert rises to the south in the Great Dividing Range and cuts north-west to the Gulf of Carpentaria, where it empties into a river delta 100 kilometres wide.
Green Hills homestead — two low-slung buildings joined by a courtyard and a vine-covered verandah that faces the river — is on its western bank.
In the wet, when the river can run up to 300 metres wide, the Ryans leave their car on the far side and take a tinny across to reach it so they can drive into Georgetown if necessary.
"It waters a lot of our cattle all year and it's where we get our house-supply water from. It's as good as rainwater," Greg says.
"The negative is our house is on the wrong side of it."
There are times when the river's as dry as a dirt road.
But when the wet really gets going around December, they Ryans will be cut off for three months or more, depending on how the rain falls.
The monsoonal weather usually lasts into January.
As the catchment swells, so do the mozzie clouds, which become so dense you have to be fully covered just to go to the back paddock, Greg says.
In preparation for the inevitable isolation, Carol starts bulk-buying food and supplies in October.
For the big shop, she'll head 350 kilometres north-east to Atherton.
Carol's wet-season shopping list runs to three tightly typed pages and includes 34 kilos of flour, 26 of sugar (all kinds), three of desiccated coconut and nearly a thousand patty pans.
Then there's four litres each of tomato sauce and Worcestershire sauce, 20 litres of long-life milk, several 10-litre tubs of ice cream, 12 kilos of margarine, and cases of beer.
In all, there are more than 260 products on the list, totalling almost 1,000 separate items.
At Green Hills, they have four deep freezers, a cold room, a pantry and and several fridges in which to keep their supplies.
As the wet wears on, chicken will become a treat, and the lamb will run out.
But there's always enough beef.
They just pick a cow, fatten it and slaughter it themselves.
"I think our iron levels will be quite high," Carol says.
When Carol and Greg first moved to the homestead in 1986, they used to cross the river in a homemade boat — sometimes with a dog or a calf on board.
"We've had a poddy calf jump out on us halfway across the river and had to rescue it," Carol says.
They've lost a few cars that were parked on the dry riverbed when the Gilbert suddenly started flowing.
And in 2009, they hauled out with their two daughters to the safety of the cattle yards when the river rose beyond 10 metres.
"Even the disasters can be good memories to me," Greg says.
What good old days?
Jervoise Station sits on top of the Great Dividing Range, with 20 kilometres of dirt road to the north, and 35 to the south before you hit bitumen.
In the wet, you're locked in by the Dry and Clarke Rivers, and the Burdekin.
Kerry Jonsson, who has lived at Jervoise for more than 50 years, recalls a time in the mid-70s when they got 40 inches — 1,106mm — of rain, and even pushbikes wound up bogged on the front lawn.
"Nearly drove us women crazy 'cause [the men] couldn't do anything, so they sat around the house and played cards and ate bread and ate whatever I cooked for them all day," Kerry says.
Back then everything had to be salted, and you had three kerosene fridges to get you through the wet months, she says.
Nobody goes hungry now, but they did in those days.
"I think all women in the bush have worked out [what to do] when the weevils get in your flour and you've got to bake bread, and you run out of soap, so you have to make your own," Kerry says.
"So, no, I don't talk about the good old days because they're not as good as these are."
Now there are two dry storerooms, a big walk-in freezer and five smaller ones — including one just for chicken — and a back-up generator big enough to keep them all running when the power goes out. Which it does, and usually for three or four days at a time.
Kerry's daughter, Pam Jonsson, says they always keep enough food "up their sleeve" for a couple of months to get through the monsoon.
That includes "frozen veggies, cheese, all the stuff I bake for the workers, and individually wrapped cakes and biscuits and sausage rolls".
She knows when she's stocking up at the supermarket town folk might think she's panic-buying.
"Everyone's staring at me, but I'm like, 'Mate, I just live on a cattle station a six-hour round-trip from a shop'," Pam says.
Living this way, Barry says, is "in your DNA".
"You do experience some isolation, but if you enjoy your own company or the company of your family, then it's not a challenge at all," he says.
