Around here, properties sell for one of two reasons. The first is the husband has a catastrophic accident and the farm becomes too much to manage. The second is the wife can no longer stand living away from everything and leaves, and the farm gets sold to settle the divorce. Either way it's an unhappy departure.

Some days I think I never want to leave here, but I do also worry about how I'll go when I'm older and frailer. This week I had more time to think about that.

I don't get sick very often. After we moved here it was five years before I needed to see a doctor. But this week I ran into some sort of gastro that cleaned me out for a couple of days, and left me nauseous and frail for another three. Today's the first day where I have eaten a full breakfast, but I am still off milk, fruit, oil, coffee and beer.

And over that time it has rained and rained. The water sits above the ground, pooling in spots that don't normally hold water. My goose pond went from two small baths to a lake overnight. Its so cold that overnight the puddles are freezing over, and the mud is setting in weird shapes.

At the lower end of my shed the water has finally found its way into the bottom bay. My hay is there, but above ground on a raised concrete slab. But I go in there and trudge out with hay for the cattle, and it's a quagmire of sludge. The gate that gets the most traffic is calf deep in mud. Two years ago I stoned the whole thing, layering flat stones to make a winter-passable driveway. They've all disappeared into the mud and I'll have to do it all again next summer.

So when I go out I am rugged up, and just do what I have to do and come back inside. But in this current state I am seeing things through a half-glass empty lens….I'm normally a half-glass full guy. There's trees I should have pruned. There's two gates the ram broke to escape his paddock that have to be welded back…he's due to be separated back into his own paddock in a few weeks, so that's a pressing task.

Our olive oil needs filtering. It's sat for a few weeks now and the sediments from the crushing have settled, so the process is to siphon the oil into a new barrel and leave the sediment behind. But it's been so cold the oil won't flow!

Because the ram got out our sheep are due mid-August, which is earlier than I wanted. I expect we will lose a few to the cold and wet.

All of these things are just something that needs dealing with, but the last few days its felt overwhelming.

With all the rain the Ovens River peaked at 4 metres a couple of days ago, which is just below low-level flooding. Even so, there were some closed roads further downstream.

It hasn't rained, much, today, but the river has only dropped a little bit. Its still roaring through at almost flood level. And Mount Buffalo that feeds it is covered in snow, and we have torrential rain predicted for the next few days.

I'm thinking we are in for another flood.