HOW WE SEE IT! Saturday Snapshot

If you see me standing out in the rain getting soaking wet anytime, leave me there…. I’m fine.

I’m just enjoying something we’ve not seen a great deal of at home in South Australia, and probably trying to fill my pockets to take some rain back with me to the farm.

The past couple of weeks really show just what a huge country Australia is… and how diverse their challenges are.

Heatwaves in Western Australia, ongoing and crippling drought in South Australia and devastating floods in Far North Queensland.

We are fortunate in Douglas to have dodged any great impacts of floods, and just over a year after the flooding in the wake of Cyclone Jasper, we should feel lucky that we don’t have to face that again.

Feeling lucky, though, shouldn’t mean being reckless and not taking advice from authorities when they are working to keep the public safe and keep our communities moving.

And, spare a thought for those in Townsville and Ingham, or the farmers in South Australia like me who are desperate for one decent rain or a couple of bales of hay to keep their stock going.

Afterall, we are the lucky country, and that is more to do with our people than it is to do with any weather event or where we live in it.

What was that you said?

Panic buying is something that fascinates me.

Now I am sure that comment is going to get ol mate who makes comments on our Facebook page about the media whipping people into a frenzy more fired up than a Category 4 cyclone that makes landfall.

Mate, if I had the power to make 1000s of people rush en masse to the shops and clean out everything from anchovies to artichokes, just by writing what the weather bureau, police and disaster management leaders issued as advice, I’d have a much higher paying job.

If I could get those shoppers to even take the vegan sausages from the shelves, I’d be head of marketing for Amazon tomorrow.

I just cannot wrap my head around the mindset of people who can stand alongside others and grab grocery items they know they have never used and likely never will, just because that person next to them might get it.

It isn’t driven by greed. It isn’t driven by fear. It is just plain stupidity and evidence those people have not planned, not taken on board the rolling messages the likes of councils and emergency services have fed them through those very media outlets often blamed for creating panic buying scenes.

I can almost guarantee there’s one person who contributed the relatively subtle panic buying in Douglas this week who has an unopened can or jar of something in their cupboard from March 2020, bought alongside the three jumbo packs of poo tickets they snapped up in the great dunny roll shortage.

Plan, don’t panic