Ducks and a lesson for a wet day

Well, I s'pose I should show you a little of what this wonderful wet weather has done to our countryside... this is an image heavy post, so get the caffeine ready and make yourself comfortable...

~.~

Firstly, let me explain my post title.

One: today was Friday and my kids stayed home from school. The roads are horribly greasy, the gullies and creeks are all running, and the rain was hanging around. So we spent the day doing a bit of homework and some 'outdoor' activities.

Two: meet Daffy and co...

An entire flock of ducks sitting in disbelief atop a bridge.

This bridge links our place to our neighbours place and is part of a major thoroughfare for this neighbourhood. What were they all looking at? And what caused the 'are you kidding me?' expression on the two foul at the far left of the image?
~.~

Here's a glimpse...

See that bubbling, brown, swirling-ness to the left?
Can you hear the roar of water as it charges downstream?
(Oh... clearly not - this is a sound free blog, isn't it?)

That'd be the river coming down, folks!
In all it's brown, filthy, frothy glory...

See that fence disappearing into the water?

Compare to this shot taken just after our New Year rain...

Mr Incredible would have been pretty much underwater had he tried this today!

Here is a wider perspective...

And a much better vantage point!!

It's quite an impressive run, really. The best for a very very long time. Perhaps enough to lift our big dam (about 20km downstream from this bridge) from 2% to 3% of capacity. Who knows? More outrageous things have happened...

Here is an angle from the bank - you can see there is still a very long way to go before this bridge goes under... in fact, it NEVER has. But you can see how high (decades ago) the water once sat, almost at the top of those huge cylindrical pylons. I remember actually water-skiing under this and almost being able to touch the giant timber beams of the bridge itself.
~.~
Add up those 20km of riverway and the gap of about 18 feet from bridge to water here...

You can see we aren't even close to old records yet!

Meanwhile, up on the bridge proper...
Our intrepid flood inspectors are setting out...

And a mother tries to distract herself from the awful drop to the water below with some sweet reflections... desperately ignore her offsprings' tendancies to hurl sticks into the upstream side of the bridge, then belt back across to watch the hapless twigs float down the muddy torrents.

How many children do I have again? Mr Incredible is explaining away his enthusiasm for this behaviour as helping our kids learn about currents and forces and water and eddies. All of a sudden, the man is a homeschooling fanatic?

Of course, each neighbour has to carry out their own personal inspection of any local flooding. We ended up with three vehicles parked at the end of the bridge comparing river stories. Hey, it doesn't rain here that much! We savour where we can...

~.~

Of course not EVERYONE was thrilled with the influx of water into our river system.

This little guy was taking refuge on a rock below the bridge...

At least he was...

til the Granite Glen homeschooling posse arrived for class!