Ebb and Flow

It is, without a doubt, the most anticipated event of the year out here.  The Wet season break.  There really are only two seasons in this arid landscape - the Wet, and the Dry - and our lives are lived against the backdrop of their constant ebb and flow .  Like jealous would-be suiters, they compete in the atmosphere above for the prize of the earth below.

While the Wet season breaks suddenly, the Dry moves in with cunning and stealth around March, slowly driving the Wet home to the tropics in the north.  It’s those steady high pressure systems, rolling across empty deep blue skies that dominate the Dry.  Slowly and relentlessly, it draws the moisture from the earth below, drinking in every last drop until the red dirt is parched and set with a hard cracking crust.

The Dry brings with it day after day of cloudless skies and a warming sun that holds the mid year chills at bay.  It draws southerners out from under their drizzling clouds in search of that thawing warmth, snaking up the highway in their thousands, towing their rigs and swamping the roadside rest stops.  

For month after long month, not a drop will fall from those skies.  As the soils bake and the blustery winds blow through, a coat of dust settles.  The Dry claiming its prize.  Every rock. Every leaf and tussock of tinder-dry grass. Every rusty tin roof is veiled by the muting red dirt that is swept up from the dry and now bare earth by the spiraling desert whirlwinds.  

Come October, as the temperatures rise through the high thirties, threatening to break forty it begins - the build up and the longing for rain.  The speculation is spurred on by an ache deep in some old locals left knee as he sits at the bar in the Goldfields Hotel - a sure sign that it’s on its way.  Then there’s the denial, not wanting to hold out hope of relief.  “It’ll be late this year for sure... if it comes at all.”

As it nears the tension builds.  You can feel it.  Electric and buzzing through your skin, tripping each and every nerve ending in turn.  There’s something about living in this ancient landscape that awakens those long forgotten instincts.  That sense, a deep knowing of what is to come.  The same cues that spur the ants into defensive action and drive the erratic excitement in flocks of corellas compels you to look to the sky and search the clouds as they roll in.  

Hanging with the change in the air, that breeze just a little cooler and the very slightest hint of moisture, is the question on all of our lips. Will today be the day?  When the Wet and the Dry do battle in the sky above, will today be the day that the Wet will break the tight grip of the Dry’s thirsty embrace?

It’s not a certain victory, but the Wet is a persistent challenger and each afternoon it returns to the battlefield.  It’s billowing thunderheads reach high and dark into the sky, pushed upwards by the Dry with all its might, not yet willing to let go.

But finally when those first few drops, full and heavy hit the earth, they give the impression that gravity alone didn’t draw them there.  That it was through sheer will, grit and determination, forces beyond the laws of physics, that they pushed through the thick hot air.  

The first rains bring a promise of a new beginning and cast loose a sense of relief that sweeps through town leaving no one untouched.  They inspire a flurry of cameras clicking and Facebook status updates - “It’s here” as though announcing the second coming of Christ. It washes the landscape clean, revealing hidden colour and light, and it’s at times like this that you see most clearly those fundamental forces that truly determine the path of our lives.  You see the elements that both give and take away.  An understanding of what you truly need, basic matters of life and death, is the precious gift this ancient landscape and the ebb and flow of the seasons can give us.