How about that! I've been stymied my pain and stiffness because the weather has been so unstable. But yesterday -- in an unusual meteorological occurrence here in SEQ --the wind swung around to the North West, and I felt great.
It's not so much the wind but what may cause the wind to shift...
But today with prevailing winds back in place, I'm 'under the weather' again.
I have windsocks and I monitor the breezes as here in Beachmere it is windy and the wind will tell me what's happening on Deception Bay without having to visit the shoreline.
My socks and rotar spun sharply around yesterday to record the shift.
But for most of the time wind in South East Queensland is relentless from the same general direction (although it shifts to blow more often from the the south west over Winter) .
Two days ago it was like living in the mountains -- a misty rain with squalls and a very low sky, but yesterday I could almost make out the leaves on the Malaleucas on Moreton Island, 30 km away. Crisp and sharp.Still. Little clouding.
Most locals may not notice this and take it for granted but the old bod sure registers the change as much as my spinning cloth cylinders.
We're away from the Brisbane River valley so the dampening effect of the air current patterns -- inland along the Brisbane River valley then back to the urban core loaded with pollution the following morning --isn't so evident here.
Similarly, if you go to Bribie or Moreton Islands you can watch the wind, tides and currents play havock with one another on the great sand banks along Moreton's western shoreline. Skirmish Point is worth a visit for the tide change alone.
But when the wind is factored, white horses rise up all over the place running at cross purposes. The irony is that because the northern bay is so shallow on its western margins -- despite the winds --you don't get much yachting off shore nowadays even though yachts used to sail to Pumicestone Passage from Brisbane for oysters, fish, and slake lime before steam was employed and the roads built.
The lime was first harnessed by burning Aboriginal middens so you can imagine how many thousands of years of accumulated pippies and oyster shells were burnt and then incorporated into cement to build Brisbane town.
So as natural phenomenon go, the wind -- and its shifts -- is as untainted as it gets today. But as for the ecology-- like the middens: exploitation rules.
