The main event of the past couple of weeks has been the weather. I know, I know, people generally talk about the weather when they have nothing else to say. But this weather definitely IS worth discussing.
Desert rain is always kind of cool. It sometimes sweeps in from nowhere, and when it’s off in the distance you can clearly see the bands coming down from the clouds. It’s quite pretty. I remember my first real experience with desert rain and flooding – back when my aunt & uncle still lived in California, we went on a little weekend trip out to a desert lake town to take the boat out. The weather wasn’t looking promising, but we went ahead anyway. I remember the rain coming down and the flash floods that we had to drive the truck and the boat and trailer through. I found it all extremely exciting. Driving through desert floods, woo hoo! The flooding here a couple of weeks back made that look like a puddle.
It started to rain the last day of February, and didn’t stop for DAYS. Massive amounts of rain. It just never freaking stopped. Naturally, that was the afternoon I decided that it would be a good time to do some laundry. After about 15 minutes of being up on the line to dry, the rain started and didn’t stop. A day later I finally gave up on drying my clothes the old fashioned way and nicely asked for permission to use the dryer due to natural disaster-esque circumstances. Anyway, the afternoon of February 29th a few of us girls took a ride over to the road leading to Ormiston gorge, which is our neighbor gorge about a 10-15 minute drive away. We basically went to watch the water level rise. It had rained a bit before the 29th, so the water levels were already on the rise. We stood in the road and watched as the water filled up the land on one side, before slowly starting to leak over the pavement. When we got to the Ormiston road the road was dry. By the time we left 20-25 minutes later, we had to drive the van back to Glen Helen over the start of a rushing river.
It poured all night long, and the next morning, March 1st, all roads in our area were closed. Basically every road in the semi-populated part of Central Australia was shut tight due to flooding. That meant no one was legally allowed to come to Glen Helen, and no one here was allowed to leave. Luckily for us, the night that the rain really set in we didn’t have many people staying here at all. Only a couple of sets of campers, that’s it. It was a very quiet night, which was good. Had the place been packed, then we would have been trapped out here with a lot of cranky guests who couldn’t leave the property. But we were pretty much empty that night, so we didn’t have many guests to look after. The whole experience ended up being kind of fun. It was like having 3 snow days in a row! Only instead of being snowed in, we were flooded in.
The water level of the Finke river, which flows basically in the resort’s backyard, did rise considerably, but it didn’t come close to creeping up on the homestead building or anything. The water level of my bedroom, however, did unfortunately rise a bit. I found out the hard way that the hole in my wall where the air conditioner sits is not sealed to perfection. The first time I was woken up my droplets of water smacking me in the face I was a bit freaked out. Once I realized what was happening the creepy factor went away, but in the morning the top half of my bed, including the pillows, were soaked. There was also a puddle of water under my bed deep enough for a small goldfish to live happily in. Lucky for me other than the top of my bed, none of my important stuff was touched by the water.
I was hanging out in my room on the 1st when I heard my next-door neighbor, who had been down at the homestead working, calling out for someone. I can’t remember if I just had the day off, or if I was home because there was no need for me at work. But anyway, I popped my head out of my door immediately to see what the ruckus was (I initially assumed someone had been bitten by a snake) and I found her walking up toward where all the staff members live with an aboriginal guy in his underwear. She was looking for the chef, since he has a big 4WD vehicle, as the guy in his underwear had been sent out by his friends to go look for help. Apparently they had gotten their car stuck in the rising floodwaters. So I hopped in the truck to go along for the ride as well, since I’d never seen a drowned car before. This is the sight we found:
Yes, it’s unfortunate, but it was also really funny. Why the hell would you even attempt to drive through a raging river like that??? They wanted to get to Alice Springs. For a football game. The roads were closed and there was a river raging across the road, but they attempted to conquer it – for a football game. Ugh, men. But anyway, the next 20 minutes consisted of the guys asking Dean to drive his truck into the river to pull out the drowned land cruiser, and Dean responding no, no, no, over and over again. The conversation literally went around in circles. Drive out half way and throw a rope? No. We’ll borrow a rope and throw it out? No. Drive out just a little and throw a rope? No. On and on it went until the 3 guys standing on (semi) dry land finally absorbed the fact that the land cruiser was going to have to stay in the river, and that their friend needed to abandon ship. It was just too dangerous to drive any sort of vehicle into the water at that point. It was just too deep and had too much power. It would have eaten the truck alive, and any ropes thrown would have just gotten washed downstream.
Once the 3 guys eventually got the point that there was going to be no happy ending, they started calling out to their friend to make a swim for it. The friend didn’t seem too keen on the idea. They kept calling out to him. They were yelling out in their native language, but you didn’t really need to understand the words to get the gist of it. They started laughing at him and kept calling out that he basically needed to give up and get his ass in the river to swim back to shore. Eventually he gave in, delicately removed his shoes, and got ready to make the leap:
As soon as he hit the water though he was instantly swept downstream, and his friends all burst out laughing. You can see his head here, bobbing as the water carried him away.
He eventually found shore though, and he was back at the truck in less than 10 minutes, so he didn’t get too washed away. Once all 4 were back at the homestead they got food and all cuddled up together under a pink blanket to get warm again. I wish I had a picture of that, it was quite entertaining to see grown men snuggling in pink.
Marina, the housekeeper, wrote a little article about the whole incident. She used one of the photos that Dean took of the guy stranded on the roof of the land cruiser, and she submitted it to the Centralian Advocate, which is a local newspaper for the region. Not only did her story get published – her first published piece of writing – the picture made the front page. We were all pretty pumped that our afternoon excitement made the front page of the newspaper.
The next morning some friends/family of the 4 stranded land cruiser guys (who ended up spending the night at Glen Helen in the backpacker bunkhouse) showed up to come and rescue them, even though the roads were all still closed. They left in the late morning, all piling into 2 cars to go and conquer the roads to try to get to wherever they were going again, but that wasn’t the last of them. Later that day, around sunset, we went for a little drive around the area to see how badly the roads were flooded, and we stumbled across the 2 cars. They hadn’t gotten more than 20 miles from the resort all day. Both cars were broken down, once had been drowned by another flooded section of the road and was being pushed along. So once again the 4 guys from the drowned land cruiser spent the night in the backpacker bunkhouse, only this time their friends/family/rescue party had to stay too. They didn’t seem to want to accept the fact that mother nature always wins.
The roads were closed for 3 days, so for 3 days we didn’t have a whole lot going on. There wasn’t much work to do since there were no guests. I can’t recall what on earth we did to amuse ourselves during those few days, but I don’t recall being bored either. Anyway, on Sunday the 4th the roads started to re-open, and business as usual slowly started up again. It certainly was a good time though. I very much enjoyed being rained in. It was like a little adventure!
What else is new? The baby snakes are still around, only they seem to be weaseling their way into buildings now. Someone found one living in the safe in their bedroom. Another staff member found one sitting in the bar area, in a pink tray that we use sometimes for silverware. A guest in room 5 came into the homestead the other night in her bathrobe to report a baby snake hanging out in the doorway to her bathroom. Luckily all 3 indoor sightings have been the baby pythons, who we just pick up and cuddle before setting free in a better spot. Here’s me playing with one that we found outside the staff quarters a few nights ago:
The other recent excitement is that I went on my first helicopter ride. A couple of days ago I showed up for work and Ryan, who drives the chopper, came up and asked if I wanted to fly. He had a customer that wanted to do the longest, most expensive flight that Glen Helen offers, but he needs 2 passengers in order to fly. Staff gets a discount on flights, so he was trying to find 2 staff members to fly for half the discounted price. That way he’d get his 2 fares in that are required for the flight, but since the helicopter can seat 3 passengers, 2 of us could split the cost and both go at a much cheaper rate. I thought about it for a minute and then decided to go for it. I’ve never been in a helicopter before, and figured I might as well go up for my first ride with the only person I’ve ever met who flies helicopters. Plus I got out of an hour of work J
The flight was pretty cool. The main event was flying over to Gosse Bluff, which is a giant meteor impact crater that’s like almost 150 million years old. It’s one of the largest in the world, but it dwarfs in comparison to the size of the actual largest in the world, which I was told is somewhere in South Africa. I didn’t get too many good pictures of the crater itself unfortunately, since I spent most of the time filming it on another camera. Ryan wanted to get some video of the crater from the air for an updated promo video for the helicopter flights, so I did that instead. I did get some good pictures of Glen Helen gorge and the resort though!
Here’s an aerial view of the gorge where we all go swim and play in sometimes:
And here’s a couple of shots of the resort itself from the air:
That’s all for now! Only one more month left up here before the monster trip begins. I am going to actually SEE Australia after I leave here, and it’s all going to happen over the course of only 2 and a half months. It’s going to be tiring. I’m trying to get in as much sleep as I can now…
