aka R’acquel

The weather is foggy & damp, but there are no thunderstorms in Leura. Without warning, the computers shut down – and it’s another blackout. The mother finds her body in a state of shock. Her insides are silently taking a while to digest the fact that she’s just lost a shitload lot of data that didn’t get saved, whilst her son displays a more overt version of being scared by screaming out loud. He runs up to her with his ears covered by his hands, crouching into her to seek protection like an animal cowering for shelter in a cave. He pleads with his mother to go into the bed so they can hide under the covers for safety…

Mum & an almost 7yo boy called Aidan, race to grab the flashlight from under the kitchen sink, and run into the bedroom. They are hiding underneath the doona covers. The following conversation evolves during the 19 minutes of their lives that are spent together without any power in the house…

Aidan: I’m scared we’re going to die!
Mum: Why do you think we’ll die darlin’?
Aidan: Because our fridge doesn’t work.
Mum: How is that going to kill us?
Aidan: Because our food won’t be refrigerated, they’ll rot away.
Mum: Do you understand that there are some foods that don’t need a fridge?
Aidan: Huh? (he cheers up) Toast?
Mum: Yeah. Toast doesn’t need a fridge.
Aidan: but… the toaster doesn’t work.
Mum: That’s right, but you still have bread. Sometimes you have sandwiches, don’t you?
Aidan: Aha!
Mum: You don’t need a toaster to make a sandwich …and there’s tinned tuna. That doesn’t need a fridge. There are still foods that don’t need a fridge…
Aidan: Tinned Tuna?! That needs a fridge!
Mum: No it doesn’t. I put it in the fridge because I like it cold.
Aidan: Why?
Mum: Tuna doesn’t have to stay in the fridge because it’s a preserved food. Food in tins can live on the shelf. Does that help? To know that we won’t starve?
Aidan: Hmm, mmm
Mum: Another way to get food is to go to the shop.
Aidan: but those shops, none of the shops registers will be working. They’re all destroyed. They’re all… what might have happened for that lack of power?
Mum: I don’t know, our electricity supplier always has constant blackouts, it’s a problem – isn’t it? It is a problem, I agree. We’re not going to die.
Aidan: I think we’ve been using too much electronics!
Mum: I think you’re right. We’re very dependant on electricity.
Aidan: It makes more greenhouse gases and an angry mob will come here any minute now.
Mum: Why?
Aidan: because….
Mum: An angry mob might come to our house?
Aidan: but they’ll breathe all the greenhouse gasses.
Mum: Huh?
Aidan: They’ll smell all the greenhouse gasses. The greenhouse gasses will make people sick and they’ll call the angry mob.
Mum: The angry mob? Who’s the angry mob?
Aidan: It’s a crowd of people with flame torches.
Mum: A crowd of people with flame torches huh?
Aidan: aw…. In Newtown, I wished I lived on level 3.
Mum: Why?
Aidan: Because it’s not so high.
Mum: But we’re living on the ground now.
Aidan: But an angry mob can go to our house on the ground.
Mum: Oh… well you don’t have to be scared of the angry mob because we won’t have an angry mob attacking our house. We’re not the one’s responsible for power supply, it’s Integral Energy that is. I think I’d be more worried if I was Integral Energy living on the ground floor don’t you think?
Aidan: What’s Integral Energy?
Mum: Integral Energy, that’s the business that supplies the power in the Blue Mountains. It’s their job to give us the power supply and they’re not doing a very good job.
Aidan: Well I’ll throw their butts in COURT!
Mum: or… you could write a letter, and tell them about the problem. We also live in the mountains, so there might be a reason for why this area is more prone to blackouts compared to the city. Perhaps it’s time we wrote them a letter and asked them why it’s happening, and what they’re doing about it to fix the problem.
Aidan: They can’t do anything about it.
Mum: Are you ok? You look very sad.

(tears are beginning to well in Aidan eyes, he’s doing “the wavering lip”)

Mum: My poor boy – are you ok darlin’? We’re not going to die. We’re not gonna die. We have food at home. We have blankets to keep us warm.

Aidan starts to cry…

Aidan: I’m not very sure, I think it’s very sad. All the power plants might be destroyed.
Mum: Destroyed? By what?
Aidan: Some evil Japanese, Japan. The Japanese. they must’ve been destroying the power plant to stop Australia defending the whales so they can kill Australia’s whales. When I join the army or the air-force, I’ll have to drive an aircraft bomber. When I’m over the Japanese ships, I’ll drop bombs on them and BOOM – that’ll kill some of the Japanese.
Mum: To stop them from killing whales?
Aidan: Yes!
Mum: So you’re not happy about that… You’re not happy that the Japanese are killing their whales?
Aidan: Yes, and here’s something more for you. They destroyed our power plants.
Mum: What makes you say that?
Aidan: To stop Australia guarding the whales.
Mum: But ships don’t run on electricity. They’ve got petrol and generators on the ship. If the Japanese destroy a power plant on land, it’s not going to affect the power on a ship. The Australian ships can still do their job. They’ve got separate power supply units on the ship.
Aidan: and after the war at Japanese, I’ll have to go over to the country of Japanese and send all the soldiers out and then drop bombs on Japan.
Mum: Why? Why do you want to go war with Japan?
Aidan: Because they’re bad, they’re bad people.
Mum: How are they bad people?
Aidan: They tried to kill Australian whales.
Mum: Do you realise there might be some Japanese people living in Japan that aren’t happy about the whales getting killed?
Aidan: No. All of them want the whales, because they want to eat them.
Mum: …but there are some Japanese people who are vegetarian. They don’t eat meat, so they wouldn’t want to eat whales.
Aidan: What’s a vegetarian?
Mum: A vegetarian is a person who only eats vegetable foods, they don’t eat any animals. There are Japanese who are vegetarians.
Aidan: Vegetarians die…
Mum: What makes you say that?
Aidan: Because they don’t any nutritious, more nutritious foods. No nutritious.
Mum: Vegetables are very nutritious…
Aidan: but they’re not very calciumful… They don’t have much calcium.
Mum: Vegetables have calcium in them.
Aidan: How much?
Mum: :O I don’t know… some vegetarians drink milk, that’s a good source of calcium. They don’t kill cows to get milk. So that’s why some vegetarians are ok with drinking milk and eating cheese.
Aidan: ..and milking cows?
Mum: Well, not many people milk cows these days.
Aidan: Why not?
Mum: Because it’s done by machines. You saw the You Tube video on how to milk a cow, do you remember?
Aidan: Yeah Well – the machines are, they break down!
Mum: What machines?
Aidan: Cow milking machines.
Mum: How do they break down?
Aidan: Maybe the suction device gets broken. It can’t work without electricity!
Mum: Are you feeling a bit better about the blackout now?
Aidan: No… (very sad) This electricity problem is going up. Awwww… no! You know, Japanese ships are stronger than our war ships. We’ll be defeated easily.
Mum: I don’t think the power supply problem here is caused by the Japanese.
Aidan: What is it caused by?
Mum: I’m not exactly sure, but I don’t think it’s got anything to do with people bombing the power plants. It’s another type of problem, it’s a local problem.
Aidan: Did someone cut the electricity wires?
Mum: Um.. I don’t know, but I do know that these problems usually occur when there is a storm.
Aidan: Oh no. A tornado will suck up our house and destroy it to bits. Then we’ll be killed…
Mum: Hmm… We don’t get tornados in this region. Not in this part of Australia. The tornados are called cyclones here, and those tend to occur in northern parts of Australia. Up in the top parts like of Australia like Darwin and northern Queensland.
Aidan: But tornados could go all the way to here.
Mum: Um… there might be the odd tornado or water-spout that happens in Sydney but they usually don’t come to the NSW area, not where we live.
Aidan: Which is Darwin region?
Mum: Right at the top of Australia.
Aidan: Which is DARWIN region?
Mum: Northern Territory.
Aidan: Is it “NT”?
Mum: Yep – that’s right. It’s NT
Aidan: What is – Olympic Park?
Mum: Olympic park? That’s in Sydney.
Aidan: What’s an Olympic Park?
Mum: It’s a big space with lots of sporting facilities. Venues to do sports like archery, cycling, swimming, gymnastics, boxing, weightlifting
Aidan: Errrrrrr I hate those trams.
Mum: Trams?
Aidan: I hate them running and going in the streets because they disturb the traffic!
Mum: They’re usually co-ordinated with the traffic Aidan.
Aidan: What does co-ordinate mean?
Mum: Work-together. I think some have to follow the traffic lights as well.
Aidan: Why do some trams have traffic lights?
Mum: So that they can work together with the cars on the streets. When one direction of cars needs to stop, the tram can stop or go.
Aidan: You know? Trams are very boring.
Mum: Why are trams boring?
Aidan: Because they’re such a slow, low train that goes on the road.
Mum: They’re faster than cars sometimes, because cars can get compacted in traffic jams whereas the trams are on a rail system…
Aidan: But it might accidentally crash into a car that’s passing!
Mum: A car might accidentally crash into one, maybe… are you feeling a bit better now?
Aidan: But when a car accidentally crashes…police will arrest… stop the tram running… Australia’s power supply is not very good. I think I’ll have to leave I’ll have to go to another country… I think I have to go to another country.
Mum: mmm
Aidan: We will have to go to another country!
Mum: Well… are you feeling a little bit better now? A little bit less scared?
Aidan: Ohh no, I’m getting more scared.
Mum: Why?
Aidan: Look – the sky is getting darker. When it gets darker, evil monsters come.
Mum: We can light candles… would that be fun?
Aidan: No thanks.. No thanks! nononono, I’m not good at handling flammables.
Mum: You don’t have to handle it, I can handle it. Listen, how about I check the fuse box, to make sure it’s not a problem with the fuse box? If we can get the electricity back on, then it’s probably not a blackout.
Aidan: No! Don’t do that to the fuse box, you might get killed! There’s spiders hanging around the fuse box! (concerned, because his mother was bitten by a female huntsman whilst opening the car door recently, it was hiding under the door handle)
Mum: I can use a broom to sweep them away.
Aidan: But they’ll run up the broom and bite you.
Mum: That’s alright – I’ll use karate!
Aidan: No! That don’t work! If you use karate, that will never work. Spiders will.. when you try to punch the spider, it will bite you. The spider will bite you if you do karate.
Mum: (laughs) I can bring some fly spray.
Aidan: But it’s poisonous!
Mum: Yeah. It’ll kill them, if there’s any there.
Aidan: But you’ll have to run away quickly.
Mum: I can do that.
Aidan: But you can’t run through the gate because it’ll take too much time closing it.
Mum: Well I need to check the fuse box anyway. I need to check the street to see if we actually have a blackout or if it’s a fusebox issue ok? So, I’ll check it out.
Aidan: Are you going to go far from my house?
Mum: No, I’m just going to check the houses. There’s no lights in that house out the bedroom window over here, so I’m just going to go to Daddy’s workroom to see if the lights are off in the other neighbours house. Because there’s no storm, there’s been no signs of thunder so it’s very unsual to have a blackout…

Mother and son exit the bedroom. The power returns.

Mum: It’s back. The electricity is back!

Windows plays it’s start-up music on the computer, startling both of them.

Aidan: I hate that windows start up music!
Mum: Me too! I don’t like it either!

The End

…of a very interesting 19minutes of life together with my son, and no power.

Like, I think we’ve clocked more hours without power in Leura compared to “Earth Hour” this year.

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Queen sums it all up in a nutshell for today.

Time for me to decompress at the gym.

Pray tomorrow, gets me higher.

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See how busy we’ve been? Look at the state of the lawn in our backyard. Hubby has been so caught up with manufacturing his whistles that I ended up challenging my refusal to learn how to start up a lawn mower. I’m the one always cleaning the toilets in this house, because my husband doesn’t know how to use a toilet brush. The embarassment of owning weeds and scottish thistles gowing up to 1.5m high in the front lawn of this house, in a “Garden Village” for crying out loud, finally got the better of me.

The flies have been so psycho up this way, that i had to invent my new Woztraylian Bushwoman’s (Reverse Swagman’s) Hat for protection. The psycho flies were attacking my ears so badly, that i created some protective ear flaps out of sticky fly-catching paper. Instead of shooing flys away with a regular swaggie hat, i designed this one to attract and kill them.

The front lawn before i started to learn how to start the mower. Take note of how the quality of light in the sky begins to change with the next photo! It’s the early beginnings of a new afternoon storm approaching.

The front lawn after i learned that there’s no point in pulling the string thingie if you haven’t pushed the accelerator throttle down thingie first. The down side of finishing all the mowing, was that the sound of the motor was no longer drowning out the sound of the dying flies stuck around my ear flaps screaming “help me, help me, help me, help me!” in stereo! 555

It took me about 60 minutes to mow our lawn. This new hat of mine reduced the entire psycho fly population of Leura by close to 150 flies. That’s approximtely the equivalent of one psycho fly attacking your ears every 24 seconds. Can you see why i had to invent this hat now? I was hoping that i could send them a very strong message of “fuck off” - that maybe they could tell their friends to,

“Stay away from this woman’s ears! She’s dangerous!”

…but they seemed to be somewhat aloof to this.

It is no longer a myth for me that the sign of sticky psycho flies attacking your ears in Leura, now means that there is going to be a fierce storm that will be brewing in the afternoon. The more psycho & sticky the flies are, the more volatile the storm usually becomes.

Some shots of the orange hazed clouds post-storm. This is about the 4th time that i’ve seen this phenomena across the last 2 years. You can see more orange-sky phenomena photos from My First Storm Chase in Feb 2006.

It’s been the coldest summer i’ve ever experienced in my life. I had to wear my winter coat a number of times during December(our summer here), and we’ve had to put the heaters on for some nights as well.

The dought has broken in many parts of oz with the La Nina weather pattern returning. Very high levels of rainfall have been having a significant impact on my plants.

Napoleon has never flowered for 2 years, just as my dwarf palm hasn’t given birth to a new stem either.

I’ve had this breed of succulent for close to 6 years. The first time i ever saw it flower was last year, where it had no more than 5 or 6 flowers. This time around - it’s a a full blown explosion!

This other succlent, has never looked so pregnant in my entire life of getting to know it over the years. The intensity of it’s colour has never been this saturated or explosive in it’s display. Old plants once deemed as potential dead - have been rising from the dead in my front lawn as well.

What has been the most striking across this summer, is the weather pattern of hot mornings with clear blue skies, that are consistently followed by the formation of electrically charged storms in the afternoon.

I’ve found it fascinating how the storms always form between 3-4pm on average so consistently. As for why i’ve been able to register such a time frame? It’s because these cloud formations start to occur when it’s time for me to pick my son up from school.

We had another hail storm the other day. My son never enjoys the thunderstorms because the electricity blackouts upset him a lot. It scares him. He thinks it’s going to be the end of the world (without electricity) and he’s also seeing the news reports of the climate getting worse, with many floodings and all sorts of other natural disasters revolving around the weather on TV.

I decided to try and divert his negative regard towards the weather into something positive. Here is part 1 of measuring the Leura “Floods” at the front of our house:

After the storm subsides, my son does a more accurate reading of the water level with his red K’nex stick.

For now - i must return back to life & work/work/work ~ and learn how to take more time to relax. It’s been good to be able to pull out my camera… but *sighs* ~ i have to get back to my work. Life’s great - but there’s a lot of amazing things in my life that i have to get back to achieving.

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Is it just me, or are other people sensing some strange kind of significant shift in the air? I’m beginning to experience really bizzare co-incidences occuring, very strange connections with people (but it’s really positive). It’s been a fairly mindblowing start to the new year.

It’s like ever since the Rudd/Labour government got elected into power, there is this distinctive sensation of “relaxation” in the air. Curious to know if others around the world are experiencing something similar. My gut/intuition is sensing that some amazing things are going to happen this year for people.

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Coastal wind, fire, severe weather & thunderstorm weather forecast for NSW today. Heard news of sailboats getting capzied in Cremorne.

We haven’t been affected much over here. Experienced strong intermittent wind gusts in the morning, coming from the usual N/NW directions but they died back as the day progressed. The morning had a distintive early summer feeling about it with faint scent of bushfire smoke in the air. There was a notably less birds singing in the bush this morning.

Temperature started off at around 16C - steadily rising to 24C by about 3pm. Very sunny during this time but a sudden cloud cover passed by around this time, generating dramatic on/off/on changes to the quality of light.

North view of the clouds from the house and the view of clouds facing west below when this super light rain was experienced.

Headed out into town with Aidan around this time to visit his dad doing Oz Whistles over at the Leura Mall festival going on this weekend. It began to sun-shower with very light rain that would last about 30 seconds and then stop. The intermittent light rain was more prominent in town from reports.

Sounds of helicopters flying overhead has been fairly prominent this week. Caught one flying past that was headed east towards Wentworth Falls. Amazing how much they remind me of dragonflies.

Views of the clouds facing west as we headed into town. I’m not highly into reading cloud formations as weather signs, but it’s a new branch of learning that i’m allowing myself to be open to.

A highly unusual sighting of the pink galah/cockatoo on the way into town - it’s the first time I’ve seen this kind here. The most common I’ve seen in the streets is the yellow-crested one, and then the occasional black cockatoo (always flying in the air though, never on the ground). I remember one conversation of people commenting about how many more cockatoos there seems to be in this area now - making claims it’s because the weather is getting warmer.

Any tulip lover like myself is bound to get a rise whenever they walk past something like this.

One of the main roads very close to town. Pity i didn’t quite capture the same angle during autumn, but you can find one picture of it over here.

If there wasn’t a festival happening in the middle of town, i don’t think my son would have been inspired to climb so much today.

The last snapshot of clouds today, facing north at the house again at about 5pm.

The weather experienced a sudden drop from 24C down to 15C over about 2 hours till 7pm. A cool humid thrust of energy in the air with that ionic/electric kind of smell about it - but i don’t think it’s very likely to crack into a big storm.

8pm now. Temperature has cooled down to 12C outside (which could continue to cool further), but the indoor temperature has dropped from 24C down to 22C across 3 hours, which explains why i’m still comfortable with just wearing a t-shirt.

I’ve been really worried about how this house will cope in the summer. If this is how the season is to pan out, then this design of the house with west-facing windows may not seem so bad. We could easily open all the windows for a quick chill-down of the house if winds continue this recurring N/NW direction (and are cool!). With bedrooms located in the east quadrants, these rooms are noticeably cooler too so this will help with adding a little more comfort during sleep.

I have noticed that as we’re on a very steep slope here, there’s only been a period of about 3-4hours of afternoon sunlight that pours completely into the heart of the house during this winter and the sun is rapidly obscured by the mountain. It’s been very benefitial for winter heating, raising the indoor temp by about 6C. Curious to see how this goes during the summer.

This experience of living in another location in this town has influenced my “house hunting” a great deal. I would like to buy a place in a few years, but it’s obvious that i have to choose very carefully about which side of a mountains I will want to settle with. The slopes make as much as an impact as a dense forest of trees would when they shelter benefitial light entering into a house. The quality of sunlight is really important to me. I couldn’t tolerate living in a very dark house. I like them bright, dry and insulated with good ventilation.

It will be interesting to see how the satelite images across the 24hours of today will compare to what I’ve seen today, so i look forward to catching up with that animation from the BOM (bereau of metoerology) in the morning with my coffee. It’s a new challenge I’ve decided to take on as a ritual, but i’m not sure if i can do it every single day. Will see how it goes.

UPDATE

10pm - indoor temperature 21C, outdoor 12C

The night air is now laden with fog. So - is it the rapid cooling of temperature which results in fog? I will need to check it out on google

Too hard to capture fog at this late hour and i can’t be bothered pulling out the tripod. Very light sprinkle of moisture from the fog which is not-quite rain, and precisely at the rate which makes using the windscreen wipers on the car to be really annoying because you have to switch it on and off for a single wipe manually.

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