Acheron — Chapter 7
River of Sorrows
January came round again, and with it, the longed-for rain after a parched year. However, it seemed that we were about to get too much of a good thing. Such is the lot of the Aussie farmer.
The radio spoke in sombre tones of a deepening East Coast Low. Coastal New South Wales was soon awash. Then it swept down across the mountains and was upon us.
It rained all day, then it rained all night. Thunder cracked and lightning flashed, but mostly it just rained. The dry ground could not absorb all the water that fell from the sky — it ran off in great sheets, swelled every track to a stream, every creek to a river, every river to a raging torrent of mud and debris.
In a grey, sodden dawn after a fitful night’s sleep, I stepped out onto the veranda and peered through the residual drizzle into the valley.
I couldn’t make sense of what I saw. The familiar landscape had been rearranged. The tree-lined meanders of the narrow Acheron River were gone. In their place, a wide expanse of grey-brown liquid, dotted with tree canopies, power poles and the roofs of buildings. A flat and apparently motionless expanse, except where obstructions funnelled the flood: there you could see the current tugging and worrying at anything that tried to resist, stay still. Mobs of cattle huddled anxious and…
