Iggy....or isn't he?

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January 28th 2012

Published: January 28th 2012

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Bugle Boy and Lips

First lightning storm

In an attempt to keep the mind from all the "what if's" we thought we'd take this opportunity to share some of our most recent adventures, some possibly a bit mis-adventurous! While we wait for cyclone Iggy to grace us with his presence, above is the current "prediction" of Iggy's path, however we are well aware of the non-predictive nature of cyclones so we watch, and we wait!

Yesterday was spent tying down, locking away, securing, putting indoors pratically everything not bolted down around here in readiness for some pretty serious winds (yes, Jase, even worse than in your undies!). The best site to go to if you want to keep an eye on this system is www.bom.gov.au where you can click on Current Warnings for WA, and it lists all the relevant pages you might want to look at. We are also on high flood alert at present, so we are getting battered from all sides and wondering how in the hell we ended up in this mess 😊

But, it's all experience, and certainly something we won't forget. Not to mention the 2 snake visitations we've had in the past week '(that's just

The keg of goodness

Kept expertly chilled on the long, hot journey into our NYE campspot, Stargazers Camp, Millstream-Chichester NP

the two at our place, not the other 10 that have been killed elsewhere around the station buildings this week alone) the worst being the 7 footer found in the cat run, and yes, the cats were in their run at the time. This happened last night, we heard an almighty ruckus going on in the cat run while we were watching a movie inside and when Jeff ran out with the torch, found this giant nestled among the cage wires, with poor Oscar stuck down the basement level with this thing above him. Bailey had already shot inside with a tail as wide as a baseball bat, Jeff distracted the snake with the torch and Oscy took that opportunity to "ride like the wind" and shoot indoors himself. Our hero Jeff, SOMEHOW (who knows) managed to knock this thing on the head with brute force, using a metal pole, killing it and pinning it by it's head from the top of the cat run. it hung there all night until we ventured out in the light of day to really assess it's size.......MASSIVE. And dead.

Anyway, onto more pleasant things. We were lucky enough to borrow one of

Ashburton River

this is at about 23 feet, since then it has risen as high as 29 feet

the station cars and head off for a few days over New Years, heading north-east to Millstream-Chichester National Park, then dirt roads south, through Hamersley Gorge, Tom Price and then due west back to Nanutarra and home again on the 2nd Jan. We saw & swam in some amazing waterholes, which are now all flooded due to the recent rains in this area. So we got to see it all just in time! Our river, the Ashburton, has risen considerably from all the inland storms, but thankfully leading into Cyclone Iggy the level is back down to about 14 feet. it was double that just a few days ago, so with all the rain we are expecting, a welcome relief to think that the river may not flood us in as well!

The past couple of weeks have seen a real sense of the tropics arrive here, and we've seen our first clouds, rains & thunderstorms of the season. These clouds roll in by about 4pm most afternoons and put on an amazing lightning show into the evening. Jeff has been getting some really awesome lightning shots with our camera, thanks to the remote button he got for Christmas

Storm surge #2

from Scott & Maria (thanks heaps!). It's means he can take night shots and leave the shutter open without having to go near the camera itself, so you don't get the blurring you would normally find by touching the camera to close the shutter. It's been fab to add shots like these to our photo album!

We hope you all had a great New Years Eve, best wishes for 2012 and we will see you on the other side.....of Iggy that is! All going well, we did all this preparation for nothing major, however our hearts do go out to any townships that cop the full brunt of this big cyclone. Who knows, that may still be us! Till next time, wish us luck!

Additional photos below

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