We had plans to go to the same event Helen referred to - Sessionfest, run by the Newcastle and Hunter Valley Folk Club. Sessionfest was to be held at Walka Water Works at Oakhampton, off Oakhampton Road just north of Maitland. Oakhampton Road is now closed and under water.

Right up to Thursday night, we were still intending to go, although it had started raining. My car was packed, including an extra tarp, raincoats and gumboots, and we were picking up Sandra on Friday morning. Overnight a big wind came up and I wondered how we were even going to set up camp in those conditions. As I went to bed, I began to entertain the thought that maybe I was mad to be thinking of going.

John woke me up on Friday morning with dire news of severe weather warnings, continuous heavy rain and gale force winds, possible flooding and general destruction in the Hunter Region and Sydney. Sandra had cancelled, and when I looked up the folk club site about Sessionfest, I found it had been cancelled too. I spoke to Bilbo who was the contact person and he said they may yet try to have a session there on Sunday night. That would have turned out to be a vain hope. The Water Works seems to have been very aptly named for this weekend!

As we sat at home warm and comfortable it became increasingly obvious that no-one was going ANYWHERE! It turned out far worse than we could have conceived of. Never mind being under feet of water, we wouldn't have even made it there. A number of roads that were on our route are now under water and closed, including this one A section of Oakhampton Road has washed away.

Maitland itself has avoided the worst possible scenario with the Hunter River only peaking at 10.6 metres instead of the expected 11.4 metres, but it's not over yet - More evacuations expected in NSW and More evacuations along Hunter. There has been significant damage to a lot of property and 9 people have died as a result of this storm. So the cost has been high.

As far as I know, all of us Muddies are okay. The only time John and I ventured out was to look at the local scenery on Saturday afternoon. We have the Cooks River not far from here, but we are well up on a hill, so no danger of flooding. The Cooks River was looking as high as we have ever seen it, and the golf course nearby was very flooded with thousands of seagulls there, probably taking advantage of all the worms and other little critters coming up for air as the water table rose. The rest of the time we have been mostly warm and toasty indoors watching a weekend of Dr Who episodes on UK TV.

I had to put newpaper over a window in the lounge room because a hail-sized hole in the window from a previous storm was getting bigger, cracks were appearing around it, and the whole pane was in danger of getting blown in from the wind. The window faces south, where all the wind was coming from, and it was rather draughty till I covered it.

Our backyard is a mess. The tarps over the BBQ area are in shreds, some coloured lights are smashed, poles are broken or bent, ropes are down or broken, a lot of John's tools are wet and quietly rusting - but that's his problem. I had a lot of tender plants in my no-dig gardens, including some basil, which is normally finished by this time of year, and an amazing tomato plant which self seeded and has absolutely NO business looking so big and healthy AND bearing tomatoes in the middle of winter. This was probably because our May was unseasonally warm, but nights have been getting very cold lately, particularly clear nights, so to protect them from possible frost, I had covered the gardens with plastic, held up with garden stakes and weighted down with bricks on the edges. The plastic had mostly blown off and wrapped itself around the clothes line or was impaled on some of the garden stakes. Yesterday I went out and fixed that, so the plants are again covered. Some small branches have broken off them from the weight of water-laden plastic, but nothing major.

I partially unpacked my car this morning, but I have left some camping gear in the back part of it, because Bilbo was talking about possibly having a substitute camping /session weekend some time in the school holidays, which are only a couple of weeks away. the stuff can sit there quite happily for a while and not get in the way of anything.

The weather is now fine - even sunny some of the time, and one thing I definitely don't have to do today is water the garden!