mainly for my overseas friends: the floods

I'm aware from comments here and on Facebook, just how much coverage overseas has been devoted to the recent & ongoing flood situation, but I also know that my overseas friends don't really have a way of measuring the sheer SCALE of the disaster... or indeed any way of knowing where I am in relation to those scenes of devastation.

so
just so's you know:

Not just Queensland - which copped the worst of it - but also vast areas of New South Wales, Victoria [ which is where I am ] and even Tasmania have experienced flooding.
You look at a map of Australia and we're talking almost the entire eastern third of a country that is not that much smaller than Continental USA [ if you don't count Alaska ]

I'm one of the lucky ones.

Nothing worse than a bit of storm water through the big shed, and the frustrations of trying to get down to Melbourne the other day ... which by the way I succeeded in doing not too long after the last missive.
The creek that forms my neighbours-over-the-road's back boundary rose enough to cut about 100m of the dirt road that leads to the Pyrenees Highway, so I had to detour in and out the 'back way', but get through I did without risking life or limb.

Now, in a water related segue, according to my understanding [ via the Almightly ABC* ] the insurance industry apparently differentiates between 'stormwater' which is what came down the hill and through my shed, and for which I and many others are covered, and 'floodwater' which is what happens when a creek or river overflows its banks, and for which almost everyone is not insured.

Bloody semantics!

Am I alone in thinking that it totally stinks that people who have faithfully paid their premiums year in year out, thinking that they were covered for any and all eventualities, are now finding out that they will be refused their claims ?

and off the soapbox now



* National Television Broadcaster