After 24 hours of absolutely incessant rain that put almost three inches (74mm) in my rain gauge, it stopped. The sun shone and the breeze puffed the clouds a little higher than the trees, although not enough to clear the mountain ranges.
Such rain on my tin roof drowns out all other exterior noises, and many interior ones! Suddenly, I could hear a rushing sound, too strong for casual way the trees were being moved by the wind.
The spring gully must be running!
This is the head of a ‘riparian gully’, one of several steep gullies that I have been regenerating with indigenous rainforest trees, but it only looks like a river or creek when the spring-fed dam above it overflows.
Today it is running fast on a well-worn route, over slippery rocks and grateful mosses, before disappearing into the dense tussocks hiding the sudden plunges, the waterfalls that cause the loud freight train sound that I could hear.
If no more rain, the sound will be gone by tomorrow, but the spring will overflow gently for perhaps a week, feeding the thickening rainforest further down, and ultimately the creek in the next valley.