What a weather week it was!

While we're house sitting in Flinders, New South Wales, our homeowners are travelling with their caravan (trailer) to the south and west of us. They've now been away almost three weeks, and in that time they've had blue skies and sunshine, pleasant daytime temperatures, cool evening temperatures for sleeping, and two nights with rain. Ideal conditions for that type of travelling, so we're happy to hear that.

We've had more days than we care to remember with heavy downpours of rain, or else skies that constantly threaten rain. Let's just say we've done more reading than usual :)

Following a day of torrential downpours here yesterday, this is today's weather warning:

We have been able to do some visiting when it hasn't been raining, and some mall shopping when we just want to get out of the house.

Last Saturday we took advantage of fine weather and toured along the coast to the south of us. On a recommendation from our homeowners, we stopped at a coastal "fishermen's club" for lunch. It's billed as having a million-dollar view, and it certainly does.

Seven Mile Beach 

The restaurant overlooked Seven Mile Beach. In preparing for this blog, I learned through Wikipedia that in 1933 this beach was used for the first commercial flight between Australia and New Zealand. I doubt I'd be comfortable knowing in advance that a beach would be used as a runway for any flight I'd be taking.

Along with various families enjoying the beach, a few of these birds were also at the water's edge. Apparently they are pied oystercatchers. We watched them drill down in the sand with their beaks, but didn't see them having any success with finding anything to eat.

We then drove a scenic tourist route inland on winding roads - up, over, and around mountains. 

This is not my photo, as I didn't react quickly enough, but we did stop for an echidna (sometimes known as a spiny anteater) to cross the road. We didn't know what it was at the time, but Greg looked it up when we came home.

On our way home we stopped at a 3-day jazz festival that was on in the nearby coastal town of Kiama. We also returned there the next day to enjoy more of this outdoor festival.

Yesterday was another indoors day, because of heavy rains in the region. The TV news showed vehicles in floodwaters up to the roof of the vehicle, in a town only about 15 kms (10 miles) away. It poured all day. 

This photo was sent to us by our homeowners, who received it from friends. It's also not too far from us, on a winding road that cuts through a mountainous area. You can see a band of floodwater across the road behind the vehicle. News reports showed that 11 people had to be rescued from 9 vehicles when the road suddenly flooded. Earlier in the day, the TV news had asked for people to avoid all non-essential driving.

While we've been experiencing excessive rain here, in our hometown of Niagara Falls, one week before spring arrives, they were hit with a heavy snowstorm, after a relatively mild winter.

Here are photos taken of our home in Niagara Falls this week.

Now the rain doesn't seem so bad after all :)

We'll be returning to Niagara Falls in just over a month's time, so we're hopeful it will warm up by then. No late-April snowstorms for me, please!