January 19, 2008
Next weekend the Gold Coast will enjoy a 'wet weekend'. The spillway at the local dam is doing what spillways are supposed to do, spill, for the first time in ages. If we get very much more rain before the pipeline between here and Brisbane is finished the overflow could threaten to flood some areas. Poorer ones. The golf course flood plain has had a wall built around it that would make Israel proud. This bit of the story wasn't mentioned in the local paper though. Instead there was celebration in anticipation of a weekend when Gold Coasters will be allowed to wash their cars, houses and driveways. Lord knows the driveways need a good hose down after weeks of rain.
The fresh water showers at beaches will be turned back on until further notice. Hooray. We can have a dip, traipse back up the beach in the rain, then have a nice fresh water shower. And so can all the tourists.
We've got local council elections coming up so every story that can possibly be politicised through that lens is politicised to a stupid degree. I'm sure readers of the Gold Coast Bulletin were vastly impressed with the huge pic of their mayor in a bath, in a suit and tie, with no less than six rubber ducks and a floral shower cap. We don't do humiliation around here.
Celebrity gold medalist and mayor Ron Clarke and half a dozen Labor MPs are credited with winning these concessions from the wicked Queensland Water Commission which wanted to keep us on level 10,000 water restrictions regardless. It's not our fault the dam that supplies Brisbane was built in the wrong place. And besides, we've been better at reducing household water use than Brisbane.
Meanwhile, another Qld dam where the spillway was starting to look like a sick joke has runneth over. There are teenaged kids in the area who've never seen this in their lives.
When we're talking about a commodity that's essential for life, surely we can organise its management in some non-partisan way? Don't hold your breath. The furiously conservative population of the Gold Coast has been disciplined and blessed with rain, and the profligate Labor government in Broncos supporting Brisbane wants to tell us what to do with all our hard earned wetness. And there are people who have lived through several changes of government at local, state and federal levels with no experience of why a spillway is called a spillway.
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The good thing about all this rain is that it means we wont have bush fires this summer.
Out west they are talking in terms of profits after the losses of damage. They are up beat even while they are treading water. Its good to see.
The stock market dies while crops begin to grow.
Isn't the world just a marvelous random place?