The End of 2009

It was, as expected, a quiet Christmas Day for us. We enjoyed a great lunch of oysters, tiger prawns and bar b q’d Atlantic salmon washed down with some French champagne and my last bottle of Margan 2005 Limited Release Semillon. This was followed up by plum pudding for me and sticky date pudding for the co driver. As a result of this over indulgence we opted out of dinner that night and hit the sack early.
We swapped the usual swag of best wishes phone calls with friends during the day. But apparently no one in codriverland has yet to come to grips with the fact that we celebrate almost a day earlier than they do so all was quiet on the eastern front.

The week before Christmas, a category 5 cyclone ‘Laurence’ made its presence felt on the north west coast of Western Australia. It made landfall on the sparsely populated Pilbara Coast Region doing a fair bit of damage to the small communities in its path with wind gusts of up to 285km/h and almost 250mm of rain.
The good news was that once on land this weather system developed into a huge trough that spread across the continent and had the weather pundits predicting 200-300mm rainfall spreading from the red centre across the parched inland of New South Wales and to the coast. Emergency services were put on stand by due to the likelihood of major flooding.

The rain started here about lunchtime on Christmas Day and didn’t stop until 3 days later. But unfortunately we had only around 60mm. Not that we weren’t grateful for one of the best Christmas presents we could wish for but that relatively small amount produced absolutely no run off so our dam problems remain. At least the house tanks are full and the grass has turned a little greener. And we have another new calf!
The wine talk for the Rotarians went OK and I got a few relevant questions afterwards. I noticed only one sleeper during the thirty minutes. Hopefully this has encouraged a few more locals to turn up to the Wine Show public tasting in January.
We are still getting down the beach most days despite the rain and enjoying the surfing.
Summertime and the living is easy!
So New Year’s Eve is upon us. Might just have to find a special bottle of red to go with a nice lump of medium rare beef. Am sure there is one (or two) hidden away somewhere.
All the best to everyone for 2010.