The New Year has been ushered in on a surge of turbulent brown floodwater. So far my life and those of my family have been inconvenienced only and we are very grateful for this. We are all ok. Many people (actually the last count I heard was in the hundreds of thousands, but after this week it will probably edge up to the million/s as now the dense metropolitan areas are being effected) are not ok. They have been directly and negatively effected - damage, ruin and even death.
I have never lived through something that was officially a crisis and it is a bit scary to be inside an event where chance and nature are taking turns rolling the dice.
The water is not how it looks in the pictures - it is moving very fast. Turbulent and heavy with bits of things inside it. It pushes trees over, it carries things, animals and people away - very quickly. Underneath it, the road you take for granted may or may not be there anymore. When it recedes, the smell is boggling. I lack the imaginative skills to imagine what it is like for the people out in the north and west - where townships are facing a week or even a month before the waters recede. Oh, and it is still raining. Still raining. If you are in a position to help with money (the Red Cross is running lots of evacuation centres), then please do. This is not a drill.
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