Imagine you went to bed one night after a clear, hot and sunny day, and woke up in the morning to discover the apocalypse had arrived. Because that is exactly what happened in Sydney yesterday.
We woke up as normal at around 6.15am to an eerie red glow coming through the shutters. I got up thinking it was a fantastic sunrise, looked outside and found that in every direction there was just....well we didn't know what it was. But it was red with an orange glow, it was everywhere, and instead of a view down to the beach at Manly, we now had a view which ended at the edge of our deck. There was a weird stillness and a strange smell. What the bloody hell was it?! First thoughts was a fire - we know that bushfires coming at you are either black or a wall of red, but the smell wasn't fire, although our eyes were stinging. The kids got up and George almost immediately started to wheeze. We put on the tv and there were pictures of the Harbour Bridge covered in red smog. We were in the midst of the largest dust storm ever experienced in metropolitan Australia - a dust storm of such enormous proportions that it spread from Newcastle in the north to Woolongong in the south - some 600kms. Air pollution was 1500 times the safe level and 75000 tonnes of topsoil whipped off the rain starved fields of central Australia was being dumped on the streets of coastal New South Wales.
The TV told us that schools were still open, but that people should not make unnecessary journeys, especially if they suffer from respiratory illnesses such as asthma. Not that this was going to stop Andrew walking up to the bus stop and going into the city as usual, although I did persuade him to take an inhaler. After a few puffs of the inhaler, George's asthma seemed to settle down, so I decided that missing school was unnecessary, although we were now going to be late. And this is where our day started to get farcical....
I drove George to school, taking Anna with me, with the intention of dropping her off at her school afterwards. As George was late, I was required to take him in and fill out a late form, so off I dutifully went. However, when I told them why he was late, they said they would really rather I took him back home, as they were worried about how things might pan out for the rest of the day and didn't want him having an acute asthma attack at school. Of course they were right - what was I thinking?! Especially when I had received an email from my mum who, having observed some of the scenes on You Tube, expressly forbade me to let George and his dysfunctional lungs out of the house! It wasn't going to be a day off though - a dust storm wasn't going to turn into an excuse to spend the day on X Box - oh no....so I sent George off to get some work from his locker to do at home. On the way back from there, we bumped into the Head of Middle School, who wanted to speak to me about a letter I written about some concerns I had, so we sent George off to sit in reception whilst we had a chat.
Now, if you thought insisting on your asthmatic child going to school during the apocolypse was an example of substandard parenting, this is where I go into some real prize winning parenting. Because I completely forgot that Anna was sitting outside in the car in a dust storm, and was expecting me only to be a few minutes......
So some 35 minutes later, George comes and knocks on the door. He has received a phone call from Anna, who is in the car, and by now quite hysterical, thinking that something has happened to me. I've left my phone in the car, and she is too frightened to get out and come and find me.
I'm wondering. Do other people do stuff like this? Do other people, for periods of 35 minutes or so, entirely forget that they have not one, but TWO children. One of whom is stuck in a car surrounded by spooky red dust? Or is it just me?
My meeting with Mrs. Oates is abruptly ended, and I rush back to Anna, who is red eyed and trembling, and says she thought I had been kidnapped. I felt so guilty I told them we would all go home together, and she would have the day off as well (despite having perfectly good lungs).
And then the car wouldn't start.
So. Let's recap. We are in the world's largest dust storm. I really shouldn't have left the house. One of my children is asthmatic. The other one is psychologically scarred forever. And we are stuck, on a steep hill, with cars in front and behind us, in our car, which will not work.
Now then. Did I mention that we are not members of any breakdown and rescue group? Could I be more thrilled with how the day is going?
George, being George, and being mainly made of Andrew's DNA, is unperturbed and gets out a book to read. Anna, being Anna, and mainly being made of my DNA, starts eating her packed lunch. Me, being me, decides that the best thing to do is to phone Andrew, and complain about how crap the day is going and to try to make it his fault. Andrew, however, being Andrew, is In A Meeting, and not taking my calls. This means, irritatingly, that I am going to have to sort this out myself...
It is in situations like this that you have to thank God (or someone) that you have great friends. Because Nicky drove over, tried to help me jump start the car (this required a fair amount of giggling, and confusion, as we don't really know how to do this...), and when we failed to get it started, drove me and the children back home. Whereupon, I jumped online, joined the NRMA (the Australian equivalent of the RAC) and arranged for someone to come and rescue the car. An interesting conversation ensued about the colour of my car, which although usually silver, in common with every other car I had seen on the road, had turned orange. Nicky then came back and took me to my ailing car, which naturally was able to be jump started no problem and made me look like the idiot I am when it comes to cars.
You'll be pleased to know that the rest of the day passed without further incident and that by around 3pm the world was back to normal in Sydney and the dust storm was on its way to Brisbane. The 100km winds which had been predicted never arrived, and, apart from grimy skin, a funny feeling in the back of your throat and a covering of red dust over everything, inside and out, you'd never believe it had happened.
And now, all I have to decide is whether to bother trying to clean it all up, when they are saying there is another arriving at the weekend....
