What lurks in the dam and Aftermath of the flood

When we returned home from holidays on Saturday night, we got quite a shock. We had heard from our cat sitter about the flood waters near our house and in town that were so high that he couldn't even get to our street let alone to our house. Then we heard about the fish that he'd found in our driveway.

But on Saturday night when we got home from the airport in the rain and dark we were blown away by the mess that has befallen our driveway. It looks like one of those promotional bush tracks where eager 4WD'ers try our new cars. Here is Michael trying to get out on Sunday morning.

All around our house is debris from where the dam flowed across the paddock. There is a fair chance it would have made it close to our front stairs, which is pretty high. However, once again, not nearly as bad as many people have it north of here.

We decided to throw a line into our dam to see if we could catch any of the mystery driveway fish. In the past we've had guests who've tried and caught nothing but snags on underwater fences. This time, after our Boxing Day lunch of yabbies, we bought an Opera House Net, which is apparently designed to catch things with claws.

A couple of hours later we went back to inspect our haul and found 3 slimy squirming green eels. I was pretty excited, even though the beasties resembled snakes more than anything else (and I'm not a fan of snakes). However Michael did not have any eel receipes on hand and decided to thrown them back. Personally, I was also not looking forward to having 3 live eels in our bathtub to purge. Apparently, the fact that we only caught eels means that they have probably eaten everything else in the dam that could have been tasty. When we have some more time off we will head up the back to the hidden dam (which is muddier) and try again for some yabbies.

On the cow front, the baby moo terrorists have ram raided the new fence around the house and chewed the end of the phone cable. Michael has spent 6 hours under the house in the past two days trying to get it back together and finally succeeded (Telstra told us their first available technician appointment to get it fixed was on 13th January!). We have had to reinforce the fence with bits of junk from the shed and the neighbours are coming (any day now) to electrify it. We are keen to see these cows move on and are having fun telling them all the ways that you can eat beef.