It was a dark and stormy night...

This post is brought to you by Story Telling Sunday at High In the Sky.

This month, Sian gave us the prompt of "It was a dark and stormy night" which got me thinking about how much I love a good storm.  We're lucky that we live in a part of the world where they are not that frequent, dramatic or devastating but it does mean a lack of available material!

I wondered, should I tell you about my first big storm, the Great Storm of October 1987 that everyone remembers because of poor old Michael Fish, but actually not much happened to us.  Or the January storm 2 years later where my old moped couldn't cope and I had to push it home against the wind, but that all happened in the daytime.  How about that fabulous night 20 years ago on the balcony in Gibraltar with Management, with lightning illuminating the entire sea in front of us?  Er.. no, its not THAT sort of blog.

In the end I asked Management "Can you think of a dark and stormy night?"  His eyes glazed over and a smile twitched at his lips "Gibraltar."  "No, not that one, its for my blog."  "Ah, I see, no not that one then. Erm... the Outback?"  "YES!"

As part of our Round The World Trip, we had to coincide several parts of the world in the 'wrong' season.  One of those parts was Australia, particularly the outback and Northern Territory.  They have a wet season there which runs from December to May but it is also incredibly hot so the climate when we were travelling there was humid, so humid in fact that it melted my nail varnish off!  We travelled around Alice Springs on a tour bus visiting Uluru and Kata Juta and most of the time we slept under the stars in swag bags.  At least some people did, I don't think I slept at all.

Desperately trying to sleep on the first night of our trip to Uluru.

We headed north from Alice Springs to Darwin making stops in various sparsely populated, widely spaced places heading for Katherine Gorge so we could do some kayaking.  We saw many amazing things along the way including this termite mound.  This is the last photo we took with our old 35mm camera which finally died after a rather fun bus journey but that's another story.

That night was the first night that retreated inside the tents which were really just canvas huts with 4 racks for sleeping on.  There is such a lack of civilisation in that part of Australia that at night it really is pitch black because there is no haze of light from local towns and obviously no street lights etc.  It really is rather surreal.  There was a terrific lightning storm that night but it was far enough away that we could just sit and watch like fireworks.  One guy played guitar and another played the didgeridoo and we sat on little stools with a stubby beer watching the storm circling around us and literally feeling like it was lighting up the world.  It was one of those nights that you don't want to end yet it wasn't full of expense or crazy partying.  I often wonder if the other people on the trip think back to that night and how beautiful it was in its natural wildness.  We didn't escape the rain that night and it came down so hard that it flooded the ground within seconds and came in through the sides of the tent which was not so beautiful.

Obviously this is not my picture, see the credits below, and we were not anywhere near Uluru when we saw our storm but this fantastic shot gives you an idea of the sort of stunning show we were treated to.

http://blog.smallworldjourneys.com.au/uluru-storm/

I don't expect to ever again experience a storm like I did that night.  Now its back to my usual storms which normally involve heavy rain on the school run!

If you've got a scary or stormy story, or any story really, please do link up and share it with others, we love to read.

Bye for now
xx