On the contrary, he’d just spent most of the last twenty hours in a jumbo jet. He was about to go flying in a Microlight Thruster. It was an outfit that would normally have been unbearably hot in those conditions, but Ben was feeling cold. He was clad from neck to ankles in a flying suit and his ears were muffled with big headphones like a pair of black foam doughnuts. But right now, English teenager Ben Tracey was out under the glaring sun. Most sensible people were indoors with the air conditioning on full. The sun was shining brightly and the temperature was over forty degrees. A freak tornado - which had gone as suddenly as it had appeared …įebruary half term in Adelaide, Australia, was startlingly different from England. They must have come from somewhere out in the desert. It was covered in dust, and thousands of stones. There was no water anywhere, not even a trail of wet footprints where he had come in. They were, however, covered in powdery red dust. That was when he noticed another strange thing. Matt leaned the chairs up against one of the posts that supported the roof. In under a minute it was deep blue again. The strong sun came out and the sky brightened. His neck and arms stung as though pins were being thrown at him.Īnd then, as suddenly as it had started, the storm stopped. Matt looked up at the sky and dashed out to rescue them. Outside, the two chairs had been knocked over. ‘I just thought it was a bad line,’ said Jenny. Hailstones were pounding onto the decking, hard as golf balls. ‘It’s coming down in buckets here,’ said Matt. The weather forecast said there’d be no change.’ Surely Jenny wouldn’t even be able to see through the windscreen. The rain was coming down with such a force that it was stirring up the dust in the valley like feet stirring up muck at the bottom of a pond. Above, the sky was an angry stripe of black. Through the window Matt couldn’t even see the vines, just a thick rust-red fog.
‘Are you driving in this?’ He had to shout. Matt could barely hear her, the sound of the rain was so loud. He ran into the kitchen and snatched up the receiver. One thing Matt was sure of: no storm had been forecast for today.Ībove the noise of the rain he heard another sound. Now that the vines were mature, rain could make the grapes rot, and so they had been praying for the dry spell to continue. First, worried that the drought would kill the vines, they had spent a fortune watering them. He and Jenny had spent most of the season watching the weather forecast religiously. Now it was like sitting under a waterfall. The rain came thundering down, making a deafening sound on the wooden roof. The vines, completely still a moment ago, stirred as though an invisible hand was ruffling through them. Moments ago the hillside had been bathed in fierce sunshine as usual. He went back, got two more, turned round-Īnd stopped. He took two folding chairs from the stack leaning against the kitchen door and set them out on the stretch of grass in front of the decking. It was Matt’s job to set up the tables and chairs. Jenny was down at the local store getting supplies for the buffet lunch that would welcome the workers. Matt took off his bush hat and wiped the sweat out of his eyes, then stepped up onto the wooden decking that ran along the back of the house.
COMPLETE CHRIS BACHALO DR STRANGE TORRENT FULL
For the next two weeks the couple’s wooden ranch-style house, which nestled at the bottom of the valley, would be full of guests.
Friends, neighbours, family and extended family came from miles around to help. The harvest was always a special occasion for Matt and Jenny. Now it was finally February, the beginning of autumn, and the grapes at Forrest Vale vineyard were ready to harvest. This summer had been one of the hottest and driest on record. To his right, black grapes made purple speckles among the green vines. To his left the white grapes showed faintly gold in the bleaching sunshine. Behind Matt, twenty-one hectares of vineyard spread up the valley in neat green rows, standing out against the red South Australian earth. It was barely nine in the morning but already the temperature had to be nearly forty degrees. Matt Forrest turned off the engine of the green John Deere tractor and climbed down from the cab.
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