Chapter 2, part 8

It’s rainin’, it’s pourin’

Okay, so the pictures today are about the rain. It’s been raining lately in Townsville and that means the same thing, every time it rains: The entire city goes to shit.

It just doesn’t rain very often here — usually we get rain sluicing off a cyclone and… well… that’s about it. So rain destroys our roads, stuffs up our shopping centres and floods my back yard. The funny thing is, I absolutely LOVE the rain. We just don’t get that much of it, so what rain we do get I absolutely treasure it. The rain transforms the city and brings it to life, making it become green overnight. It makes the air smell wonderful, and the whole city feels cleaner after it’s rained. It’s kinda magic.

The rain’s only been going in fits and pisses the last few days, but when it does rain properly you get images like the ones you see on this blog post — major shopping centres with buckets.

Seriously, Stocklands, the Willows, Castletown, all our major shopping centres leak like crazy at the slightest sight of rain. They are simply not built for rain. Often Stockland will have to shut down because of rain. Not because no one is going there — people FLOCK to shopping centres in the rain (no, I don’t get it either) — but because of things like electrical damage, and power outages. We’re not even talking severe thunderstorms with wind warnings here, man. We’re just talking heavy rain.

Because Townsville is not built to cope with rain. It’s ridiculous. If we’d just spend a little money on infrastructure to design our roads better, to make sure our buildings are designed to cope with rain, and maybe to actually improve our storm drains then we’d be fine. But the same thing happens every time. “OH NO! IT IS RAINING! WE MUST DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!” “YES! BIG REFORMS!” “EHN, IT’S STOPPED RAINING, WE’LL DO IT SOME OTHER TIME.” Then the next year, everything goes to crap again and it’s back on the same train, “WE’LL DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!” then, whups, it’s stopped raining so no one does anything.

Ehn.

All of that’s neither here nor there. What’s important is… THE FIRST FOUR PANELS OF THIS STRIP ARE ABSOLUTELY BASED ON REAL LIFE. No kidding, at last year’s Groovin’ the Moo we were waiting and waiting for De La Soul to show up and the crowd started chanting their name. Getting fed up I started yelling “WE LIKE SALT!” at the top of my voice. And the entire crowd started chanting it too!!

It was the greatest moment ever.

I love how suggestible crowds are.

–Andrew S.
(Seriously awesome moment.)