And certainly not as we’ve more commonly seen it in the past 10 to 15 years.

After experiencing the most Saturated September on record, with more than three times our monthly average, and now entering an Overflowing October which has given us a monthly average in the first week, a lot of stuff seems to be having trouble coping.

First, every commentator is demanding we admit this is climate change – often following by a severe outbreak of exclamation points. 

Climate or weather? It’s a vexed question. The respected US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) makes the distinction very clearly. Climate is what you expect. Weather is what you get.

Which raises the curious issue of the other Noah, the one with an H.

Was the Great Deluge climate change or a weather event?

Anyway, here at Casa Bushwhacked, there are many signs that nature is having difficulty recognising our new sloppy environment. It has been so boggy in the nearby bush that even the annoying barp-barp illegal minibikes are silent.

I suspect we saw a few kids go belting into the bush the other day, never to be seen coming back out. 

They have possibly been swallowed up by the massive mud and slush pools created by the illegal 4WDs who roar and bellow in the bush late at night.

These liquid mud wallows would swamp a full grown water buffalo.

The native birds are obviously confused. The nesting seasons seem to have begun early and now fat chicks are demanding constant feeding, even though there’s poor pickings on the soaked forest floor. 

We have taken pity on some and try to toss the odd bit of food around, and it now seems we are the custodians of about three magpie families. At least it meant they stopped swooping us.

The new chickens are confused. We built a nice run for the four chicky-babes, only to find it was partly across an intermittent stream which hadn’t flowed for many years.

The chooks are adapting to their environment and at least we don’t have to continue our plans to make little life vests for them.

We are confused about whether to be delighted or worried about water flowing over the spillway at Lake Eppalock. On one hand, it’s a beautiful sight after those years and years when it was a dustbowl. On the other, how would I feel if I lived downstream and the Campaspe River was already chockers?

Our garden is confused. Things we planted two years ago and either disappeared or sulked into a pale, pathetic existence have exploded into colour and productivity.

We’ve noted flowers and plants we had never even seen before, such as a huge new Lily of the Valley and some bright tulips.

The weeds, of course, are having a non-stop rave party and it’s going to take the compost bays months to digest them.

Who could have guessed that we’d delight in buying a $29 pair of gumboots from Aussie Disposals, just so we could keep the chooks fed and the eggs collected? An inflatable dinghy is the next step.

And how far away in memory is it that we were bucketing our shower and laundry water out onto the few surviving garden shrubs and watching the heartbreak of old trees dying all around? Seven years. That’s all. Bloody climate change.

WAYNE GREGSON