The river comes alive

We all know that water, along with sunshine and electricity are the three absolute essentials in producing life.  Around the coast we take these things for granted. We see them, we feel them every day.  There is nothing “special” about them, they are a part of our everyday existence and you need to go to the heart of the country to understand their importance – their real meaning to our existence that we too easily overlook in going about doing the things that seem more important to us – our work, gaining possessions, building the type of lifestyle we want.

Living in the desert brings a certain type of learning, an acute sense of the essentials to life.  That’s why people working away in the offices alongside the Todd River in Alice Springs stand, walk to the first floor windows and look at a spectacle that they haven’t seen for a while – they go as a group and walk across the road and across to the bank of the river and they rejoice in what they see before them. I ask a workmate, a long time resident, “Stuart, how often do you see this happen?”  He looks up from his screen and says: “I have been here since 2015 and I haven’t seen this much water before.  I haven’t seen the Todd with this rate of flow.”

You see the famous Todd River flows alongside the town centre of Alice and it is a very broad, shallow sandy track that people use as a walking track to go places.  It is more like a roadway than a river, except when there is a lot of rain in its catchment.  Then it transforms, within hours, to a very broad, very shallow, very fast running water course.  It looks like a tsunami – a wall of fast moving water that forces its way and takes everything along for the ride.

Now, rain, and especially rain in great quantities, is a blessed relief following three weeks of mid 40 degree unrelenting heat in the dry, open, treeless desert.  The sort of heat that scorches your hand when you pick up a tool that has been in direct sunlight for more than five minutes!  Like when you have to change a truck wheel to fix a puncture in 45 degree solid, blistering sunlight with your back resting on the warm soft red sand (a blessing to at least being in shade!) and you put out your hand to retrieve the jack handle which you just put there momentarily to have your hand burnt as if it was a poker in a fire, or when you go to redirect a plastic hose that has been running water from a garden tap to find that you think it was connected accidentally to the really hot tap instead.  For the first three weeks I did not, ever, turn on the hot tap (for a shower, a bath, to wash the dishes) because the water from the cold tap was JUST AS HOT!  Well, you get the idea that a bit of rain can be considered an answer to a prayer, so, of course, you run to greet it and celebrate its coming.

But, as we know, every bit of good fortune is punished, severely!  So rain, in the Outback, has its consequences.  It changes ALL of your plans, it rearranges what you do and, especially, where you go.  Folks from more temperate climates find this difficult to comprehend.  So, when they set out on a 500km drive to the nearest town of any size, ANY size, to pick up some gear and provisions with every intention of returning the 500km return trip the same day, if you are not a local, what you do is you hop in the chariot and head off with the tank full of diesel and a cab half full of water and the clothes you are wearing.  

You plan three hours shopping and head the stead back in the direction from whence it came.  But, you didn’t bank on RAIN!  It drizzled all the way to Alice but, so what?  The car has windscreen wipers and a roof.  What could possibly go wrong?  

At 4pm it is already past the time you wanted to commence the return – to make it the 500kms before nightfall.  After all, the last 200km is a dirt road, four-wheel drive territory and there are no street lights, only bush that looks the same as the roadway – red dust with no embellishments.  But at 4:15pm, while you are filling the tank for the return trip, the clouds open up and torrential rain makes its debut.  It has been pouring in the hills 50km away but you were unaware of that.  

What you learn rather fast is that water travels at the speed of light, especially in the downhill sections and it doesn’t slow down when it hits the straight (the dry creek beds).  The creeks, which are everywhere in the desert, transform, instantly, from tracks and roads into raging rivers and you can’t outrun the water and you can’t CROSS the flow so the dirt roads become part of the river system and NO TRAFFIC moves – for days.  So, I came to Alice on a turn-around which changed from three hours to FIVE days – and I am still in Alice.  I woke up this morning and what was outside my door?  Still raining!

I have been working from HQ in Alice, waiting for the rain to stop and the rivers to become roads again so I can get back to Finke.  Tomorrow looks likely – provided there is no overnight rain.  So, having done a bit more shopping than originally intended – a change of clothes and undies and sox, a toothbrush, toothpaste, shaving cream and razor for what has so far become a five day layover – I am just about ready to brave the 500km journey, forever keeping an eye on the sky – and hoping the windscreen wipers can have a rest.  Lesson learned!  ALWAYS take a spare pair of undies and a toothbrush, even if it is 45 degrees and cloudless outside.

You are NEVER too old to learn a new trick, or to realise that life, everywhere, is NOT the same. 

[Post script: I wrote this a few days BEFORE the onslaught of very, very heavy rains in central Australia- the place that hardly ever gets more than a few sprinkles.  I ended up staying in Alice for seven days.  On the sixth day I got the call at 7am - as I was leaving Discovery Park (the place where they planted me waiting for the rain to stop - to say "Stay right where you are!  You can't go anywhere.  That's right, I couldn't even drive the five kilometres into downtown Alice!  The road was cut off because the Todd had now broken its banks and was actually starting to flood the town - well, not the WHOLE town - just the parts next to the Todd, which included MacDonnell Regional Council's head office which I had made my workplace until the rain stopped. Finally everyone got sick of me being around so they made an executive decision to send me southbound to Finke in the hope that my the time I got to the dirt road from Kulgera to Finke (a 200 km stretch) the rain would stop and the rivers began to resume their normal course and leave the roads alone.  I am now back in Finke.

It has stopped raining (here) and road was actually quite dry and presented only a handful of surprises, one of which sent a five litre tub of icecream from the rear cargo section of the SUV, through the solid mesh safety guard and spread its contents through the rest of the vehicle.  Driving along Outback dirt tracks when it rains is a little bit like riding a full-blooded steer at a rodeo.  

Anyhow that was the drive of a lifetime, another new experience and yet another lesson in survival and adjusting from three weeks of unrelenting 45 degree sunshine to battling swollen rivers that yesterday were hiking trails.  Life in the outback is determined by the weather and when it changes instantly we mere mortals just have to be ready to instantly adjust].

Bryan Forby, CSC Finke – Council Service Coordinator Finke Community