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Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Marge! Marge! The Rains are Here!



The wet season has finally arrived! We received more rain here yesterday than for the entire February average... and don’t we know it.

The house stinks as either the damp atmosphere is allowing previously disguised smells to emanate out of hidden crevices, OR a skittish Tom cat pissed all over our patio in pernickety avoidance of getting his precious paws wet.

I’ve had two over-enthusiastic motorists almost run up my rear end on the slippery roads and been forced to shake my intimidating fists Vin Deisel-style at them from the aggressive-looking 'Golden Boy'.




Rally driving skills are once again required as potholes the size of the Chicxulub crater re-establish themselves on the sealed-on-the-cheap roads.

Despite whinging about the lack of rain for six months, everyone suddenly begins to say things like, “I wish this bloody rain would go away, I can't get the washing dry.”

But the worst thing is, as soon as there’s a hiatus in the downpour, a menacing cloud of mosquitoes the size of crows appear, siphoning through the window, biting on the bony bits of our toes, 
making it frustratingly impossible to scratch the itch out.

We happen to live on the upper banks of a river. If you peer closely at this photo (taken from the front of the house) through a magnifying glass, you may be able to make out a trickle in the distance.





A few hundred metres along the path, the salty end of the river widens a bit.



A couple of hundred metres further and you come across the weir, where the fresh rainwaters rush over on their way out to the ocean. The weir only overflows once a year in the wet season.



I love this river. It’s in my blood. I grew up on the other side of it and used to daringly and dangerously ride a bike across the narrow weir wall in the dry season with my twelve year old friend, Lindy. Our mothers never knew.


After I gently pass away at the age of 104, whilst singing a karaoke duet of "I Will Survive" with Scotto at a Euro-trash nightclub in Ibiza; I would like my ashes to be lovingly sprinkled on the banks of this river.

The trouble is; this river has a bit of a bad name. 
The Ross River. 
The very same river the nasty mosquito borne virus, Ross River Fever is named after. 

You know… fever, chills, muscle aches, rash, fatigue, aching tendons, swollen lymph nodes, headache, especially behind the eyes, joint pain, swelling and stiffness.

I’ve known about a dozen people who’ve been debilitated by this disease and every single one of them lived on the banks of Ross River.

Scotto and I, at this very moment, are sitting in our lounge watching My Kitchen Rules whilst being besieged by immoral, winged creatures of the night who’ve casually cruised up from the malevolent, swampy depths of this very same waterway. 

Better get out the Aerogard eh, Marge?