After the Flood

Looking across to the Billabong — its spilling over its banks everywhere.

Well, its pretty much back to normal in Birdsville — clear blue skies, lovely sunny days. The mud's drying out, although you still need to be very careful where you tread, its very boggy under that nice hard-looking but thin crust. The roads are all open to "high-clearance 4WDs", which means its still very wet and boggy in patches. The marooned campers are all starting to venture out, and the ones who've been stuck on various roads for the last three days are starting to find their way back in. The 30 km stretch between Big Red (start of the Simpson Desert) and Birdsville is apparently a nightmare, people are being warned not to try the Desert for another week. The runner's bus is still here, the Windorah road has been very wet, and the bus doesn't have a lot of clearance. Five of the runners have had to fly out, they've had commitments they couldn't miss. Graham Connors got away with minimal delay, as did Neil (the policeman) and Blue (the plumber), both of whom missed the first couple of days of their holidays, waiting for seats on the (small) plane. The food delivery truck reckons he'll only be a day late getting to Birdsville up the Track. There's supposed to be another front coming through tomorrow, I don't think there'll be much rain here, but may well be further down the Track, so he could have fun getting back again. There's still quite a lot of water around, and I'm told there will be a mass of wildflowers in the next few weeks which I'm looking forward to. In the meantime, here's a few pics ....

This is the Diamantina River at the bridge on Sunday, while it was still raining.


And this is on Tuesday — its risen four metres.


Lots of water where its usually very dry.