THE DAY IT RAINED

In the nineteen eighties, my missus the ever-reliable Julie, me and our three billy lids packed up all our kit and kaboodle and made for the wide horizons of the Dowling Downs from Brissie Town. What we wanted as a family, was a tree change of life. A change of a pace as they say, would do us all good.

Good for bringing up the kids in the bush and living in a country store and post office, would give them a set of responsibilities in helping their parents in running the store.

Hadn’t rained around here you see for near on three or was it four years, I hazard to guess. Mice plague number six had just passed and gone onto the great beyond and all the crossbreed cats round here, were pretty fat beyond belief. They had no appetite for mouse or rat, only wanted tin food of Luv or Kitty Krunch and wouldn’t you know we still had two months’ supply on the shelves in our shop and out in the back shed of “Hit them on the head and knock them down”, mouse bait.

Still with it being so dry, the cracks in the black soil were near on bloody dangerous, as they opened up monstrously and enormously, that they had become treacherous to man, child and beast. As Old Brownie swore he had lost a heifer calf in the paddock near his house. And Phil the dill from top of the hill, on a stack of old King James, had a confessional plea about pulling his Jessie the mongrel bitch and all her pups, which were fifteen in all, out of a crack near the old shearing shed.

And the kids at the school were loudly complaining about too many soccer balls being lost down the ever-widening cracks and the thing they feared the most was a King Brown snake living down in the cracks, just waiting for some passing by kangaroo or a wombat falling in.

As Greenie who was out of town about a mile and usually had some feed from Lucerne hay and now his irrigation pump had run dry. Couldn’t even get a drop from the creek which usually ambled along with a bit of moisture, had now dried up months ago and he too swore he saw a big red belly black fella doing a pole vault, just to get out of a crack in the dried up creek.

​Near on as I said, it was three to four or was it five years down the track without a drop and certainly nothing to wet your whistle. As every customer swore when coming into our local general store and not a day went by that my wife and I didn’t hear “do ya think it will rain today?”

As Old Bob from third house down Side Street popping in for his regular Craven A’s, “saw some lightning in the west last night, really lit the sky.” Old Bob was our town’s religious freak, who went to church every Sundie without fear, read his bible every morning, noon and night and in his little wooden house it didn’t boast of having that evil corruption contraption, which showed the evil news at six. And every morning spot on at eight, always came the same cry “God is punishing us, better build an ark.”

Old Martie from next door to Old Bob, got to the shop precisely at nine. However do you mind, he and Bob had argued twenty two years ago about John 16: 2 -3 in the bible and both had never spoken since. “Most negative man I know,” said Martie “that God put here on earth.”

“Worst drought I’ve ever seen. Can’t grow pumpkins, spuds, tomatoes or tobacco like I could thirty years ago. Had a worst plague in 56. I always open the local rag to see under the hatched, matched and dispatched to see if my onetime mate Old Bob names’ in print. Darn lucky it’s not there today!” When walking out the door.

And not a day would pass and some Cockie would grace us with their presence and vent their spleen about tough it was on the land but how would I know, a townie such as me. “Look at you and your missus, you have a store and ready cash on hand. But the prices we get for our crops deviate so much and now this drought.”

Only a local rag they would purchase and for the honour of their business, they would want a 90 day account. “Can’t you see, we would support your store more, but your grocery prices are too exorbitant for us Cocky battlers? As we both said “hello” in passing on a Thursday night in the ‘Cash-n-Carry warehouse, designed to support and cater to the businesses and the trade of the corner stores, small shops and country stores and these cockies then had the bloody hide to describe themselves as small, small businesses and got the same discounts as we country stores and smaller corner stores.

Then suddenly out of the blue it happened. Five years, six months and thirty days to the day, it rained! Huey, God bless him, sent it down in bucket loads. As first Old Bob wandered in on day one “you’d better build an ark.” As Old Martie on the dot of nine arrived, “too much, will spoil my lettuce plants.”

By day seven of this drought busting precipitation, Old Huey had a lot to answer for. The gulley was a gusher and mile across the only road out of town. Old Brownie had bogged his John Deere in trying pull some bloody fool out and Greenie’s pet pedigree Dexter cow had drowned in an over pour from the tank next to the shed.

But the worst of this calamity and that was according to your own particular view, no one could get to the pub, which was over on the other side of the gully and our store had a plentiful supply of milk and Coca Cola.

On day nine, Huey wasn’t letting up and the local populous were getting cranky as Old Bob wandered in at eight on the dot, wearing his knee high gumboots bought yesterday from the store. “My umbrella has had the dick, all due to those pesky mice and I told you that we should have built an ark and could I have my usual Craven A’s today.”

By day ten Huey never let up, as the local rag and mail could not get in, so cockies and townies had nothing else except the company of each other. A time to say “hello or g’day.” A time to have a whinge as Cockie couldn’t plough and townies couldn’t get to work. However there was blessings of sort, their little country store now became their meeting place, just like it had been years ago, when prices weren’t so steep and cars didn’t go so fast and the bitumen to the city just a thought.

​The moral of this small ditty as my wife and I just kept praying “God thank you for the rain.”