(photo by Charlie Brewer - News.com)
It wasn’t wearing an Akubra or Cuban heeled boots and speaking in a slow country twang when it visited the City today. It wasn’t quiet and shy, looking up in awe at the skyscrapers it hadn’t seen before.
It didn’t come quietly in the night in the form of fresh fruit and vegetables, or fresh from the cattle’s hoof on the back of semi trailers and refrigerated vans or in a monster milk tanker.
It was wild and dirty and threatened all before it; giving the city slickers a tiny idea of what our country is really made of.
It travelled around 1500 kilometres to get there, gathering more on the way.
It came as a giant cloud of red dust from the far west of the state, brazenly, straight into the centre of the city, showing off to all who ventured out to see it.
Weather forecasters said the dust, from drought-ravaged western NSW, was propelled by a change from northern to southerly winds and believe it has been one of the worst duststorms to reach Sydney in seventy years.
I spoke to an elderly relative near Dubbo in western NSW and he said it was like a duststorm he recalls which came through in 1954 and as a child he and his siblings were put in their parent’s bedroom and knelt by the bed with their faces under the covers between the sheets so that they could breathe. They bred ‘em tough then!
Click on either of the links below for some photos...
http://www.abc.net.au/science/photos/?site=science&gallery=/science/photos/xml/09duststorms.xml
http://www.abc.net.au/news/photos/#id=2693741&num=15
...and click here for what the Sydney Sails looks like on a "good day".
2 comments:
Scary!
And there is another one on the way within the next couple of days ...
http://www.news.com.au/travel/story/0,28318,26123382-5014090,00.html
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