It was described as a small, energetic low, moving to the north east.
It suddenly appeared and surprised us all It surprised the slow, basking sea under the influence of that climatic layabout, the slow-moving high.
It unshackled the sky. It fell like tears of contrition for the dry spell, it fell on parched shrubs and impatient farmers. It kissed brollies in Rundle Mall, scudded clouds low over Adelaide Airport and took the creases out of my newly dry-cleaned pants.
The sea stirred itself and became rough; the farmers went out and fingered their tractors. Not yet, not yet, cawed the dusty-throated crows above the dry paddocks.
It must rain for a week, said the farmers and graziers, throbbing with anxiety to go farming and grazing again.
But my neighbour came in trembling to say that his new lawn was wearing a watery diamond on every pale blade. I made him instant coffee and his hand shook slightly as he dunked a thanksgiving biscuit. He hasn’t seen rain for so long and only this week his lawn was in intensive care and we took turns with a transfusing hose.
Of course, the slow-moving highs had dominated the weather, sauntering hands in pockets across the continent for weeks, pausing to watch the Nullarbor mirages; then turning the skies bland and blue over the restless peninsulas, Yorke and Eyre. There were mutterings in Maitland and Moonta and the farmers looks in Snowtown were enough to melt the Franz Josef Glacier, wherever that is.
The slow-moving highs yawned and extended a lazy ridge, their variable winds sighing and not knowing which way to blow.
Might as well cross Into Victoria and loll about in the Western Districts in the Mal country.
It’s a long way across the continent. There’s inland trajectory, don’t forget, and the fun of being on television and being scolded by Keith Martyn. Or Bained on the ABC breakfast session.
And then came the small, energetic low with its fronts and troughs. I’ve fronted a few troughs myself in my day but we were all glad about the small, bouncy low, moist as a wife’s eyes during The Restless Years, with clouds as full-bellied as a beef-and-burgundy man.
Mind you, said the farmers, it wasn’t enough. But the small low tripped and dripped, troughed and fronted, and spangled the trees so that my poodle had to investigate the ground with a new intensity because so much moisture made it difficult to tell what was what.
The low didn’t stay all that long It arrived with a crack of thunder and left with a flounce of cloud and a scurry of rain. It dropped a quick kiss on Stirling and waved to the mallee farmers.
The sea sang, the Murray mouth opened and gargled a bit and washed some of the sand from its tonsils. The tides be- came urgent, mullet stirred, and kangaroos at Flinders Chase wrinkled noses in the rain.
The farmers began looking at their tractors like a groom looks at his bride, and some said, this was not a break in the season but maybe a chink through which the rain would finally dribble.
Why, one farmer told me, the tropical inflow could meet an intense low and there would be a passionate bedding in the Bight. His eyes were full of hectares of hope.
But, anyway, my neighbour’s lawn is a tender green and has stopped whimpering at nights. It sat up yesterday and took a little fertiliser. All because of the small, energetic low.
Now the low is well on its way I suppose Melbourne has boen visited and rained on and it’s probably going Hamer and tongs there right now. This was one low that didn’t slip disgracefully away to the south-east.
Soon it will be in the Tasman or maybe it has dissipated, off Sydney. Sydney is very dissipated and most people are under the weather there.
But everyone stand for the small, energetic low.
It has gone now. But as my shining new rainwater receptacle sang, tanks for the memory.
Max Fatchen