I mentioned we had minor flooding in July and August. The paddocks are showing the benefit of all that rain, with thick lush grass greening the view.

Stone road is revealed as soon as the topsoil dries off.

But it hasn't rained since, and the wilt is starting. The giveaway is the hidden "road" through the main paddock. It's a crushed rock road base put in place by the lunatics who stripped the topsoil from the far paddock. Is has a small covering of soil now, and the grass takes off when its wet, but as soon as it warms up it dries out and the road becomes a yellow pathway of dead gress.

Another remnant from the mining damage is swathes of capeweed growing over the top of mining spoil dumps. I've thought about spraying it...no one wants capeweed....but that would just create bare patches. Nothing much grows on these stony piles. I am slowly adding 5-10cm of soil and once the grass can get going it outperforms the capeweed. But its slow going generating that much soil, and there is so much that needs attention.

Anyway, when the minor floods happened we had the usual changes along the riverfront....mysterious new areas of dumped river soil, my inlet to the river pump dragged downstream and the pipes wrecked.

But this year there's something different.

The good news is this is downriver from our pump inlet. But its up-river for someone!

Not sure if its a horse, a deer or a cow, but a carcass was washed into the overhanging tree on the other side of the river during the flood. Its only now been exposed as the water level drops. A bit of warmth, and it has taken off. You can smell it from 100 metres away, and it is a smell that is hard to forget. Luckily we live 200 metres from the river! Oddly, it hasn't been attacked by scavengers. I guess its suspended status above the river keeps rats and foxes away, and we don't see many scavenger birds like crows and currawongs down by the river. But you would think the flies would be doing their job. Must be something different about it from being submerged for awhile.

Interesting, in a morbid way, but not something I am intending to look into further!

Theoretically it is going to rain over the next few days, with a emergency services issuing a flood warning for tomorrow. I'm a bit skeptical, but I hope its correct. A downpour would top up the paddocks again and give us another few weeks of good growth. But also, a flood might take that rotting carcass off our radar.