The Outback’s flooded.

Unseasonal rain has turned red dust to mud. Roads needed boats. Dirt track and side ditches became running ravines. Cliffs flushed into waterfalls, and a desert wasteland was transformed into a sea of green.

Water, once  a mirage, rippled reflective sunlight, cooling heated winds to calm even the fieriest of tempers. Where singed sinuses were granted a dust-settling reprieve of fresh floral fragrances from wildflowers bursting from a summer’s slumber. Butterflies and dragonflies danced on the breeze, pierced by brilliant flashes of feasting blue Kingfishers and rainbow Honeyeaters.

Instead of a wasteland of rising heat waves that blurred the vision with an oasis of the mind – this was real.

And rare.

But, as fast as this magical moment in the desert arrived, it disappeared on the rise of the new moon. Grass once tall and proud, wilted into shades of yellow. Painted birds and their spoil of brilliant bugs disappeared amidst a red dust swirl leaving a hinting speckle of wildflowers.

And soon it returned to the never-ending summer sea of dust leaving only a memory – and my photo’s…

 

For more photo’s of my backyard you can find them on my Instagram account (also found in the right margin on my HomePage).