Welcome to my meandering mind.
A few years ago, I was possibly one of the few people that knew the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) website existed. Each morning I would go there and, perhaps obsessively, check just how cold it had been that morning while I was swimming. Or, precisely how cold (or hot) it was as I walked to work. We live very close to one of the BoM's measuring stations, so it's a perverse enjoyment of mine.
Once I had gotten into the habit of that, I also got interested in how much rain we'd had overnight, where the rain had fallen and where it hadn't. I used to enjoy watching their rain radar and see the clouds build up over the State. Then it stopped raining. And it kept staying stopped.
Now, when it rains - and my word that is very rare indeed - everyone knows how much rain they had. It's not hard to find people discussing how many millimetres of rain they had overnight. Millimetres mind you, not just "yeah we must have gotten a lot" or "nah, we missed out, it doesn't look like we got any".
Most people seem to know about that BoM site now. A good thing for sure. It's a very accurate, up to date and useful website. However, the reason for this boom is as sad as the land is dry.
It started out as a 'normal' drought a few years ago, but this drought has been going on so long that we've run out of ways to describe it.
"Several years of above average rainfall are required to remove the very long-term deficits. Furthermore, the combination of heat and drought during the past five to ten years over the Murray Darling Basin and southeastern Australia is outside the typical range of variability experienced during the previous 100 years."
The March '08 heat wave (or heat stroke, as I like to call it) was phenomenal. One researcher called it a 3,000 year event and it bloody well felt like it.
'Atmospheric scientist Warwick Grace said the 15-day heatwave had a .03 per cent of occurring. "The odds are about the same as tossing 12 coins and getting all heads or all tails," Dr Grace said on Tuesday." '
Due to an ongoing medical condition the heat caused me relentlessly sharp pain in my legs and left me sleepless for over a fortnight. Of course, no one else was sleeping anyway, because the nights were record-breakingly hot as well.
Maybe for those that weren't here, it sounds like it was just a bit on the hot side. After all, we live in sunny Australia, not England. But this was something else. Something awful. In fact, we were all adjusting to it getting hotter around here anyway, but this one stopped you in your tracks.
"These March records come on top of 2007 being the hottest year on record for South Australia since state-wide records began in 1910."
Yet, what it brought out in other people is far more poignant and important than what it did to us.
We'd been thinking about the weather a lot anyway. Not your usual banal sort: "Nice weather we're having, hey." It's been more about how people were keeping cool. Ways they were saving water. Talking about the cracks around the house. The sinking driveways. The shifting sands.
However, this heat wave was a true breaking point. It was the final moment for a lot of places. It had people making decisions about what, in their garden, was going to be given one more chance and what was going to be let go. Things were strained, but with that heat, the few things that were hanging in there were pushed right over the edge. Dry, strained and finally burnt away.
And this is all from urban point of view, mind you. What the drought and even the heat wave have been doing to those trying to grow and farm to enable the rest of us to live doesn't bear thinking about. The sorts of decisions we've all had to make in our own little havens, must be unbearable when it is applied to the way you've made your livelihood for decades past. I'm not a grower, a farmer or anything of the sort, but I feel for them and anything I can give up, to keep in the rivers, the reservoirs, I'll do. Even if it is the actual drop in the ocean. It all counts and it all matters.
More so, the awareness is what matters. The conversations I've had with so many people about not just their behaviour now, but their intentions for the future are remarkable and moving. Personally, we've certainly decided to get rid of the front lawns. It's been dead for the best part of a year now anyway and it can stay that way. We have a lot of natives and they've coped superbly, so anything that's died will be getting replaced by more natives. Out goes the lawn and in goes paving and more natives. Once it rains of course - before then, there's no point.
One friend just closes her eyes as she walks through her garden. She'll apologise to it when it's over.
Another man, a dedicated gardener, one of those with the hollow rain tanks, has carefully assessed what he can bear to let die and what's producing good food and what has great sentimental value.
Another woman I know is all set to dig out the almost dead lawn and replace it with artificial lawn. Really nice artificial lawn, mind you, but artificial it will be. Something that doesn't suck up so much damn water.
This same woman, while driving to work on a morning following a shower overnight, saw a man using a shovel to pick up the water from the gutters on the road and pushing it onto the suffering council-planted trees. She didn't laugh. She got where he was coming from. So did I. It's ingenious. I've got my shovel ready for next time.
We have buckets in the shower, others use the greywater from the washing machine. Some have jugs by the sink, to collect the too-hot or too-cold water. Some of us time our showers. I know our bath is a great place for collecting dust. We're all doing something about it and have been for the past year or two. There are those that aren't and there always will be, but that's how people are. Those of us who have changed will stay changed. Maybe we'll only keep one bucket in the shower, or maybe we'll only remove half the lawn, but whatever we do, we've learned.
We realise how valuable water is and how much it means to us all. How life sustaining it is, how beautiful. This thing - it's killing us, but it's changing us too.
As I write this, we're goiing through a delicious cooler period with, ah, hold your breath, yes!, a little bit of rain. Near our home we've had almost 3 millimetres of rain over the past week. It doesn't sound like much, maybe, but with the cool days, you can see it staying on the ground, darkening the foothpaths and gladdening the hearts of everyone who goes by.
If you ever come here and you hear squeals of laughter and delight from outside, it's probably because it's started to rain. You'll excuse us if we dance.
Or if we cry.