Drips
Legacy Name: Drips

This drought began in 2001 and lasted nearly 10 years.

Australia is the driest inhabited continent and has one of the most variable rainfall climates in the world.

The garden that my mother had worked so hard for 25 years to create was a bowl of dust, with all plants dead, even the weeds could not survive.

People who had plentiful water before in rural communities were required to buy water, not only for drinking but for all household necessities.

People in cities were put on water restrictions regarding watering lawns, using sprinkler systems, washing vehicles, hosing pavement, refilling swimming pools, etc.

But these were minor inconveniences.

As we in Australia rely on agriculture as the mainstay of our economy this drought caused havoc - economic, environmental, and social.

Then the drought ended in 2010/11.

Not in winter when you would expect rainfall to occur, but in summer.

In January 14, 2011, almost every corner of Australia was being crippled by flood.

The floods began in the north (Queenland) and worked their way downwards which forced the evacuation of residents across every state, as rivers and dams burst their banks.

The country went from this

to this - in a matter of days and sometimes hours.

In these floods lives were lost, stock losses were astronomical, and damage to homes, businesses, roads, etc ran into hundreds of millions of dollars.

Lost production added considerably to the costs, as did the intangible costs, such as effects on health etc.

But despite the bad times we have great times as well, and I would never live anywhere else.

This poem perfectly describes this wonderful, beautiful and harsh country called Australia, that we who live here love.

My Country a poem by Dorothea Mackellar

The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes.
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins,
Strong love of grey-blue distance
Brown streams and soft dim skies
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me!

A stark white ring-barked forest
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon.
Green tangle of the brushes,
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops
And ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the cattle die -
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the Rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back threefold -
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.

An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land -
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand -
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.