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Colin Hughes followed up his thought about patchy rain with an observation about how rain
seems to return to where it has rained previously:
Colin Hughes: If you are lucky enough to be under storm, then the rains seem to follow that
same pattern when it does come back.
Marcus Barber: So if it rains early in one place it seems more likely to come back to that
area?
Colin Hughes: Yeah.
Marcus Barber: That‟s consistent with something somebody else said. I‟ve not heard that
before.
Colin Hughes: Oh that‟s just, well I would not say it‟s a wives tale, but that‟s the pattern. I
think most of the older indigenous fellers will probably tell you the same thing. If you fluke
an early storm, you‟ll be the first to get the next lot of storms that come through.
A similar idea, connecting surface water with rain water, was suggested by Michael Ross:
Michael Ross: I think it got something to do with all that water.
Marcus Barber: What do you mean?
Michael Ross: Maybe, I don‟t know, it‟s just my thinking. I reckon more water underground.
Artesian bore or something, maybe story water. It comes, because this area, it get early
rain and more rain, a decent wet on it, and that‟s before, than other dry areas.
Michael Ross: Because why I say that rain coming, that water drawing it, I‟m over here. I‟m
over out here at Kalpowar country, at this area. You know that country, I been there long
time now. I‟ve lived there ten years. From now, I‟ve been there ten years, and before that I
been [there] fourteen years or so. There‟s three lakes there, top, middle, and bottom. Three
lakes running like that in a row, and if there is rain around, it drops there, in that area.
[When] you go past that area, it‟s dry. Even last week, rain fall in it, and about ten
kilometres up the road, it was dry as a bone! There is something in there that, and its
similar up here. There is something that draws the rain to that area.
Marcus Barber: So if you think there is water on the ground, then that makes the rain come
from the sky more often as well?
Michael Ross: Well, I don‟t know scientific but I think there is some connection there. That‟s
my belief that there is a connection there.
Michael notes that the connection he observes between the rain and the lakes and lagoons
might be „story water‟, water associated with the ancestral creators. Ideas about causes of
particular phenomena are discussed further in 2.7.3 below. Philip Yam uses the drying of
surface water in the swamps and creeks as one way to assess whether the wet season is
ending and the rains are stopping:
About April, that‟s when the country starts drying up. You probably get a little bit of
showers, but not heavy. You can go by them swamps, creeks, when the creeks starting
dropping, you know the wet is really over now, they start to dry up.
Philip Yam
The suggestion from these comments is that rain follows predictable patterns, and these
patterns may be related to time of year, time of day, and to the presence of water on the
ground. One kind of rain, rain from heavy monsoons leads to flooding, and comments about
Oriners floods appear at 2.2.2 below.
Working Knowledge at Oriners Station, Cape York
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