The first day of winter

Yesterday, the winter solstice, James and I witnessed one of the most amazing, beautiful, inspiring things either of us has ever seen. We decided to take a spontaneous Sunday drive out to John Forest National Park, which is a pretty piece of bush just about half an hour out of the city and one of our favourite places. We usually go in summer, when it's really hot and dry and a bit brutal, so we decided it would be nice to see it in winter for once. When we got there we found the creek was completely dry, which surprised us given how much it's been raining lately, but despite that we decided to follow it uphill instead of taking our normal route through the bush. A bit further on we could hear rushing water but not see any...then we noticed a little patch of water running towards us but then disappearing. At first we couldn't work out where it was going. Pretty quickly we realised that it was actually a whole lot of water coming towards us and that what we were witnessing was the creek filling up with water for the first time this winter! In the space of about twenty seconds the patch of dry creekbed where we'd been standing had turned into a deep, fast-flowing creek and we had seen it happen! We then followed the water as it moved downstream and managed to watch most of the creek fill up. It was the most amazing sight and one that we felt so fortunate to see. If we hadn't gone to John Forest that day, if we hadn't gone right at that TIME, and if we hadn't taken that different route along the river we would never have seen this beautiful act of nature so it really felt like someone was smiling on us. It seems like one of those things everyone should see once in their lifetime and I feel so fortunate to have been one of the lucky ones.