IT'S a strange place, Australia. A challenging place.
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While most of NSW continued to gasp for rain these past few days (Orange, just down the road from us, is now months away from the toughest water restrictions in the nation), an ex-tropical cyclone soaked the Pilbara region of Western Australia.
The mining town of Newman got 142 millimetres in a 24-hour period and Marble Bar - famed for its monstrous summer heat - got 144mm.
The Bureau of Meteorology had to issue a flood warning for - wait for it - the Great Sandy Desert. And if that isn't unusual, it's hard to imagine what is.
IN NEWS AROUND BATHURST:
But then that's Australia, isn't it. Unusual.
Bathurst, hardly a standout in this nation when it comes to extreme weather, swings from -7 and -8 degrees in winter to 40 degrees in summer.
On a grim day in mid-July, the fog doesn't rise here until midday, the light starts to fade just after 4pm and the temperature struggles to get into double figures in the period in between.
Fast forward five months and it's 30 degrees at 9pm and doesn't get below 22 degrees all night. And then a summer storm rolls in and lightning makes the landscape dance.
It's been said that Australians don't live in Australia, they live on it - allowed to make their homes and their lives here only as long as the landscape tolerates it.
That theory has been on display in recent weeks with the terrible bushfires, the record-breaking heatwaves and the suffocating smoke, but if we're to be honest, our country inflicts micro-aggressions upon us all year long.
Ferocious frosts, battering winds, the aforementioned summer storms.
Startled snakes in the backyard, white-tailed spiders in the house, angry magpies in the trees.
Bluebottles in the shallows, rips below the waves, crocodiles in the rivers.
It's not a place for the faint-hearted, but it's our place. We accept the extremes and we forgive the excesses. We rationalise the dangers and we laugh at the absurdities.
And in summers such as this one, studded with so much heartbreak and tragedy, we celebrate those running towards the danger and we open our hearts and our wallets for those who need help.
It's a strange place, Australia. But it's also a fabulous place.
Who among us would live anywhere else?
