CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
As river towns and beach suburbs across Australia are busy sandbagging and battening doors, it looks as if the nation’s south-east will be experiencing unprecedented rainfall over the next few months.
Meteorologists are protecting eight weeks straight of heavy rainfall from Adelaide to Melbourne. Meanwhile Sydney City has recorded it’s wettest year in history – and it’s only October.
La Nina, which increases the chance of above average spring and summer rainfall in northern and eastern Australia, has battered parts of the country for a third year straight – and it doesn’t look like it’ll be ending until early 2023 at the latest.
However, while small businesses and homeowners begin to wrangle their heads around disaster relief and flood management – there are swathes of forgotten victims of this climate change-fuelled weather pattern.
Not just those who have been evacuated and lost their homes to furious floodwaters.
Not just those who have seen their livelihoods vanish in front of them with the destruction of businesses and factories around the Eastern Seaboard.
It’s the long-suffering wives of Australian bricklayers who haven’t had a decent root in months.
“His stamina is really suffering” says one local Brickie’s wife, Shona Winton (33).
“He’s rocking an extra twenty to thirty kegs on his chassis and his fitness has gone out the window.
Shona is not alone, right around Australia there are hundreds of thousands of spouses in the same boat – as months of rain days result in a steep drop in physical activity for construction workers.
Linda Brookton (45) says almost three years of rain days has not only been catastrophic for her husband’s rig, but also his general libido.
“He’s gone from George Clooney to George Costanza. Every day at 5am he gets the text and it’s another 12 hours on the couch”
Linda now believes that her love life is far more dependant on the moon and sun than she would have ever thought.
“During that drought back in 2018 my man was at his absolute peak in the sack” she says.
“He would’ve done 300 days back to back without a drop of rain on site.”
“He was looking like an adonis just lugging bricks by day and laying pipe by night”
“But there’s now another woman in our life, and the indoor sports have been suffering”
“La Ninã please don’t take my man”
