River Watch, a Channel News exclusive

Let's go to Steph Compton live with a Channel News exclusive.

Steph?

River watch. The mood is tense. I have been on some serious, serious reports,but nothing like this.

I... I... Marling...Darling is rising now.

I tried to get an interview, but they said, "You can't. It's a live, quickly rising river. It will literally rip your face off."

Hey! You're making me look stupid!

Get out here! River jerk!

Great story. Compelling and rich.

That's gonna do it for all of us at Channel News.

You stay classy, San Diego.

The river really is rising at an incredible rate (in the past 2 weeks it's risen almost 3 meters). What I'm finding particularly strange is the prospect of flooding but not much rain. For those of you who want specifics, this is the government site that keeps track of the depth at Wilcannia: www.bom.gov.au/fwo/IDN60238/IDN60238.546010.plt.shtml

It's due to peak early to mid May. I'm coming home in mid May for Baz's birthday and to see Vampire Weekend so I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that I'll be able to get there. The road to Sydney theoretically shouldn't get cut off however this is being touted as a once in a hundred years flood and since the road and causeways in that direction were rebuilt about 30 years ago, we haven't had a big flood so no-one is really sure what will happen. The reason that this one will be so big is that the Paroo River is running. It running is a rare occurrence and mostly due to all the rain we had earlier this year and when the two meet, it should be very good fun!

I've been going swimming most days, the water is really warm but it's quite a work out - swim fast and stay still. The moment you stop swimming, off you go. And I've had to find another swimming spot and running route as a normally dry creek as filled up.

This is normally a dry creek bed, about 50m up from the main body of the Darling

The same spot 72 hours later

And another 72 hours later

Suffice to say that I'm a little excited - I've even got some new gumboots in readiness!!

Navigation by Volvo

This week I was lucky enough to have Ellen, Simon and Mischa come stay for a few days over Easter and we (well, at least I did!) had an awesome time. We went swimming in the river and discovered that if you swam full pelt, you stayed stationary. This meant that watching Misch try to time getting sticks was very very funny. El and I also meandered down river on a tractor intertube, feeling very zen.

They all got used to the bugs and necessity of strategic lights on/off and door opening times. This is the kitchen floor post Si getting slightly trigger happy with the bug spray.

We also went into Broken Hill for a couple of days and saw the sights. Me and the big red chair; El and the memorial to the miners; and the very charming Willyama Cottage that we stayed at overnight (and yes, El and I did sit on the chairs out the front with cups of tea and books and discussed scone recipes amongst other things. Being prematurely old is not necessarily a bad thing, ok?).

The title navigation by volvo was what Simon called our rather dark & stumbling attempts to make it back to the car after a fairly mediocre sunset. Our plan was to head up to Sunset Hill to see the sculptures, watch the sun go do and drink wine & eat cheese but it didn't quite work out like that. Misch was accompanying our expedition but alas dogs are not allowed there. Whilst our efforts to conceal her were valiant (hiding her in the back of the car whilst El and I chatted sweetly with the rangers and then El suffering from an acute loss of vision (which also interestingly made her voice drop a couple of octaves) and thus needing the assistance of a guide dog - see picture below), we got to the top and were discovered by a ranger. Undeterred, we found another place to watch the sun go down from which was a little more of a bush bash to get to. But we go there are drank some wine and ate some cheese and when the time came to return to the volvo, we were able to find it again from a fair distance in the dark due to the enormous distance you can turn the lights on from - thus navigating via a volvo. A certain amount of navigating via the shell memorial happened too :)

I got a lot of love from Mischa whilst she was here too. I'm not sure if she thought I had Wessie hidden away under my tshirt (these guys are best friends from way back) but in the morning when I went over, Misch was over the moon to see me. It was almost like she was convinced that I'd gone missing overnight and had been up worrying about me - she might not have much experience herding sheep but she is very good at herding humans! Anyway, this is Misch giving me some love.

Sadly they've now gone home and I only have Mum's fruit cake to drown my sorrows...... Read that as an invite to come visit!!! Thanks a bizillion for coming to visit dudes!!