Last Weeks Happenings

Last week was a little more sedate than the previous one, which was a nice change.

Once again, the weather dominated our plans for the week.  As I mentioned last time, there was flooding in the Central West of the state.  At the time of my post, we were not fully across the full extent of things.  Locally, as the day progressed the flooding got worse.  The town was cut in two with many people stuck on the opposite side of town from their homes, including lots of school children.  

I took these photos late on Monday morning and the river was rising fast.  The water level on my gauge of the Gordon Edgell Bridge sign was much higher than the previous moderate flood.  I saw a photo later where the water was up to the sign and the poor sign had a decided list downstream.

I grew up on the flood plain and where we used to live was under water.  We moved from the street in the late 1970s. After the 1986 flood the local council commenced purchasing the houses that were on our street and there is now only one standing, which funnily enough doesn’t get flooded.  There are now football fields where the houses used to be and the clubhouses are built up, so were on islands.  Since the 1998 floods levees have been built and this was the first time they were tested. They worked well.  Last time about 200 homes were inundated.  This time there were six.

Further afield, there has been major destruction, particularly in the little town of Eugowra, which is located beside what is normally a very innocuous little creek.  A tsunami of water came down the creek in the early hours of Monday morning, flooding nearly all of the town and completely destroying 21 houses.  Some were washed several hundred metres down the street.  Sadly, two people lost their lives and it is a miracle there weren’t more.  Over 100 hundred people had to be rescued by air from roofs and trees.  It will be a major effort to get them back on their feet.

Molong, another small town had a huge flash flood from their creek, going well up the main shopping street, which isn’t flat either.  It must have been incredible to see so much water.

Canowindra has also had major flooding, but it wasn’t flash flooding to the same extent, so hasn’t received as much publicity.  Forbes, Condobolin and Hillston, on the Lachlan are also receiving record flooding as the water makes its way down the river system.

These are all small towns that we like to visit and we feel so much for them.  It all seems so much more real when you actually know the area and it isn’t just another news item.

Enough of that, what did we get up to?

I continued to work on my 15 minutes a day of stitching.  Here’s how I went.

14th, 15th, 16th, 17th & 18th

It sounds like a lot of work on my secret stitching, but on some days I didn’t spend much time.  I’m happy to say that it was all completed on the 18th and I can play with other things now.

15th, 17th, 18th, 19th & 20th

As you can see, on most days of the week I also worked on the shawl I am crocheting.  This was taken on Tuesday when I had completed my first ball of wool.  I am now well on the way with the second ball and will have it finished very soon.  On Saturday I was distracted and couldn’t count, so ended up frogging all I did that day, so on Sunday it was just a catch up to where I was the day before.  I don’t mind too much, as crochet is so easy to fix, not having to pick up stitches like knitting and I am enjoying the process.

Now that the days are longer, it has been rather pleasant sitting in Grandma’s chair in my sewing room in the late afternoon and working on the shawl, as the light is so good.

I will have to get out my Blue Quilt EPP and work on it this coming week to meet my One Monthly Goal.

Mick has another new toy for his shed.

To make it easier to work on “Floyd” and his other bikes he has bought a pneumatic bike lift.  He finds it is getting harder to work on the ground, so this will make life much easier.

On Saturday we had a garage sale as part of the nationwide Garage Sale Trail.  

It went well and the weather was perfect.  A glorious, warm spring day.  The only one we had.  I was sitting in the sun crocheting between customers, which is how I was distracted and lost count.

There was a huge Christmas Markets on the weekend, which incorporated a truck show on the Saturday, which we obviously didn’t see, and a car show and swap meet on the Sunday. We had considered having a stall, but after the lovely day on Saturday, the weather changed once again, with rain overnight and then a wind picking up. We decided against it and are glad of our decision.   We did go and have a look.  There were some lovely cars on show.  Come for a stroll.

And that about sums up our week.