Scenes from the weekend

 Some folk may have read about our Friday in the studio 'going to custard' over at Barry's blog, but I will document some of it here for my own records.

It's been raining. We have been caught in a massive low depression that is very slow moving. On Friday I was sitting in the studio watching rain outside; watching walls leak that have never leaked; watching the creek near us rise like I've never seen it, feeling edgy and uneasy. My access to the internet via my phone was gone and I couldn't text or message anybody. It was unnerving and unsettling.

I rang and asked Barry to check the radar to see if it would pass; or if the heavy rain was setting in for a bit.  It looked like it was here for the duration so he offered to come and collect me. It was the first time I had felt unsafe at the studio. By the time he arrived I had discovered significant water seeping into the studio underneath the type cabinets and so we had to really get going.

Raincoats on and we were off to dig trenches and drains to divert the water away. Scrambling to dig with sticks and stones we worked for an hour in torrential rain. The were fewer waterfalls by the time we finished!

Back inside we were mopping up - the water was headed for the piece of carpet the big old Lightning Jobber sits on and we knew that if it got wet, we could never move the carpet given the press is so heavy. We have never been so grateful for having concrete floors! Here I am still covered in muck.

By the end of Friday we could head home - with dehumidifier on; the air conditioner on dry and things looking settled. We had had 277mm of rain that day and overnight (12 inches).

Saturday it was still raining and we checked the studio - all good.  Only a small bead of water left beneath the type cabinet so we popped some blotting paper in to draw the last of it out. We thought.

I left Barry there but about 2pm I got the call - the water's inside again - so I dashed down and we were out again in the downpour trying to keep it at bay.

It has been described as a 'rain bomb'. We had about 100mm (4 inches) of rain in half an hour - I have never witnessed rain like that.

We moved a bunch of things to 'higher ground' 

Mopped madly for abit; dried off around leakage areas; and again, we left in the late afternoon with mission accomplished; this time there had been two breaches and we had added a fan to our arsenal drying equipment.

On the way home we stopped by the bridge in town to see how it was faring - the water was right up against the top board - creating waves and backing up.

Sunday morning and we had had another 12 inches (285mm) of rain in the previous 24 hours. Seriously sick of it; but it had finally moved on and we were left with the smallest of showers and drizzle all day. Brisbane and those south us are now flooding and its awful down there. One of Barry's nephews got out by canoe.

Just to the left of our driveway as we head into the studio this tree on this van.

We know how fortunate we are; and how small our worries are in the bigger schemes of the world and others' terrible flooding (the flood level at Gympie is 23m - about 70 feet, so many people evacuated, roads washed away and homes flooded throughout south east Queensland), but it was dramatic enough for us.

Grateful to be home, and warm and safe and dry.

Wild weather and the things we do...

As many of you might know, we've experienced some pretty wild weather here for the past few days. A serious cyclone crossed the Queensland coast on Friday morning and managed to dump a lot of rain and heavy winds on us as it made its way down the coast. Nothing like the impact it had up north - just devastating.  For a few days before hand we also had massive rain and wind and so the place is saturated and we are all feeling a bit damp.  We had around 400mm of rain in 48 hours.

Here are the peace flags at the front of our house.  The wild weather took them from Peace to Pace - Italian for peace - so it feels as if peace might be battered, but not beaten.

And this is what the small creek that flows thru town looked like on Friday morning.
You can tell it normally only goes thru the bit on the left - the tree in the middle is usually growing on a creek-bank.

When we were in town, the creek still had a metre to rise before it backed up against the road - fortunately it didn't happen. Normally folk walk along the footpath under the bridge...

And the road near the dairy - pelting rain and flooded.

And so we found ourselves in that strange netherworld of not being able to do anything outside, combined with a little bit of worry and lots of concern for folk.  Hard to settle. It meant I didn't feel at all creative, but wanted to do stuff. So I fiddled and I faddled.

The funniest moment was on Friday afternoon amidst really, really heavy rain when I started to iron burnt tissue paper.

I looked at myself and thought "has it come to this?"  Who else would think ironing burnt tissue paper was on their to-do list?  Possibly a few of you!

I do love a stack of nicely ironed tissue paper.

And on Saturday, I managed to get some ink out and print onto it - a few experiments to see what they might look like.  I am not sure where its headed but the thought has been in my head for a while and now I've done it.

A good way to use a weird old day.

I really like the fragmented nature of this work.

It is whispering to me and I need to sit quietly so I can hear what it says.

Encaustic incense stick play

Every now and again I get this little moment of inspiration that suggests I try some things; and this moment brought together several of the things on my current favourites list.

I started out using incense sticks to burn away letters in book pages and the notes in music scores. I really liked the look. Every since we had a play day with Noela I have been burning incense sticks and using them to create holes in just about anything. Yesterday a piece just kept on burning so I threw it outside in the rain and it stopped, I did some more and had to 'apply rain' again and so on; but I got some wonderful effects...more another time.

Whilst I liked the look of the burnt pages, I wanted to add some depth, and wrote a few words on the page, then covered it with some beautiful thin paper that I had rusted and then encaustic-ed over.

So a list of my current favourites includes: rust, encaustic, words and incense stick holes!

Not quite sure where they're headed...

 Home is where the story begins - © Fiona Dempster

Heading home - © Fiona Dempster

Floodwise - it continues to rain, and the devastation deepens. Just when you think it can't get any worse it does. Toowoomba experienced an 'inland tsunami' yesterday afternoon - so far 9 people are dead and 66 are still missing. Gympie is underwater and Maryborough is expected to go under tomorrow; Ipswich is evacuating, Caboolture is evacuating and Brisbane is likely to go under on Thursday. They anticipate a further 9000 homes to be flooded in the next few days. The floodwaters at Rockhampton just won't recede and some small towns are being evacuated for a second time (the fifth flood in a month for some).

We are safe. Our town is sandbagged now (library included - so far so good) and we are experiencing frequent blackouts - we did another essentials shop today and did so in the dark - the staff had torches and guided us around. It is wearing and tiring and deeply saddening at times, but we know how lucky we are.

Best wishes to others experiencing the water and the bushfires near Perth. A tough country.

Flood update

A quick post to talk briefly about how the floods in Queensland affected us today.  Whilst we have been thankful that we live on a mountain top we have been deluged with rain today. By 6pm we had received 250mm (10 inches) of rain since 9am - more than an inch an hour. It's still going (10pm) and we are all very soggy.

The radio has mentioned all day that towns to the south of us, and to the west have been isolated and cut off - our nearest 'neighbours' down the hill, so we are conscious that waters are rising everywhere nearby. This is of course in addition to the massive and catastrophic floods that are affecting so much of the state elsewhere.

We have a creek, the beautiful Obi Obi, which runs through our town. We watched as the docile creek turned into a tumultuous whirlpool during the day - a day of many firsts. We had never seen it so high; seen water here or there; seen the paddock turn into a dam and so on.  At 8pm tonight we got a call - all hands on deck please as the Library, which resides on the banks of the creek, was in danger of being flooded and we needed to lift books and equipment to higher levels.

We took off and as is typical in a crisis/emergency I didn't take my camera, so the photos are from my phone which isn't brilliant, with the assistance of a tiny torch. But you can see how a team of volunteers appeared and sorted things in less than hour. Our Library is such a precious resource; we hope the rain eases overnight and it remains safe and dry.

Barry moving swiftly in the background...

My foot, from the boardwalk at the back of the Library - the water is about 10 cm (4 inches) away - usually it is about 3-4 metres (9-12 feet).

The top of a tree, submerged in the floodwaters...