IN a high speed world, there's something reassuringly slow about some of the state's inland rivers.
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Bathurst, only a little downriver from where the Fish and Campbells form the Macquarie, is used to seeing the results of recent rain very quickly at the low level bridge.
The equation is quite simple: the amount of rain can be gauged by whether the bridge has gone under or not. Locals gather to look even before the sky has cleared up.
For communities along the Darling, however, the wait between heavy rain and a rise in the river can be measured in weeks, rather than hours.
Oh, and the rain that helps replenish the river might not even have fallen in NSW - as is the case with the floodwaters that are now making their way through Bourke, Louth, Tilpa and Wilcannia.
They are partly a result of rain that fell in southern Queensland that has since snaked its way through northern NSW.
It's an odd flood warning that mentions a possible peak a month hence - as is the case with Wilcannia - but that's life on the Darling, which runs to its own relaxed timetable.
IN NEWS AROUND BATHURST:
That timetable - unhurried, unbothered - is, it could be argued, part of the character of those who live in the far western reaches of the state, where the isolation and the climate and the land rewards patience and persistence and discourages hubris and over-ambition.
The "outback" or the "bush" is an elastic concept in Australia - always somewhere a bit further down the road.
Lithgow would seem beyond the black stump to some in Sydney, while Forbes or Parkes might be the point where civilisation ends for some of those in the bigger cities of our region.
For Forbes, though, it might be Condobolin. For Condobolin, Lake Cargelligo. And on it goes.
When you reach the region of the ephemeral Menindee Lakes (which are a good chance of being filled by these floodwaters) and boom and bust rivers like the Darling, though, you've definitely arrived somewhere unique, a place with its own mystery and mystique.
And an expected flood of tourists will be the perfect accompaniment to the flood of water.
Those who arrive to take a look will be seeing something that might not happen again for years - that's what makes it worth the drive.
