‘Let it rain, Let it rain, Let it rain, Let it rain, Let it rain, Let it rain, Let it rain.’ So sings Bruce Springsteen in Mary’s Place, and I was singing it on Cup Day, as Melbourne was blessed with more rainfall in two hours that she had received in the previous two months.
The fact that it was Cup Day, and that the deluge might just have ruined a few fancy suits and fascinators or made it extra hard for those stilettos to navigate the lawns didn’t worry me a whit.
Iconic national day notwithstanding, why call it ‘bad weather’ I want to know. Sure, Victoria has experienced devastating floods in the last decade, but these days, drought is the natural disaster that dominates the news and, it seems, is set to do so for the foreseeable future.
Regardless of whether or not you are a racing person, we need the rain. We need it desperately, all over this state, all over the country.
As the storm broke on Tuesday afternoon and my small, parched, suburban garden rallied within a matter of minutes, I hugged myself in delight. The sound on our quintessentially Australian tin roof was deafening. The almost-horizontal rain slashed over our wide back verandah, right to our door. When we went out for a walk that evening, the park over the road was full, not only of puddles, but of veritable billabongs of muddy water, where the local dogs were splashing and cavorting happily, and two days later, there has been a fresh new greening over the entire area. In the north-east, where devastating bush fires are both a recent memory and a constant fear, the dams on my daughter’s property filled just a little. The tanks were topped up.
I grew up in India, where at the coming of the monsoon (when it didn’t fail) after four months of ferocious heat, children and adults alike danced in the streets. Rain is a matter of life and death on our planet; it has always been so. If we city dwellers see it as an inconvenience, especially when we are all dressed up with somewhere to go, we need to get over ourselves. I’m with The Boss on this one. Le t it rain, Let it rain, Let it rain, Let it rain, Let it rain, Let it rain, Let it rain