Take notice of the warnings.

Today I spent the afternoon at Woody Point Redcliffe. It was the turn-around point for one of my sons outing with his cadet group. Basically they cycled 15km to there, then back 15km to Shorncliffe to earn their cycling badge.

While myself and some of the other fathers waited with the supplies and cooked snags on the barbie, it became apparent that there was a high likelihood of a storm appearing later in the afternoon.

You get a feel for it up here, when the stickiness has gotten to that point of extreme skin irritation and the air thickens as if stopped waiting for a storm.

There's the storm rolling in

As the stragglers were pedaling in, it was pretty obvious back over the water to the East that our thoughts were real. A dark mass had formed and was slowly heading our way. Those with iPhones and Blackberrys automatically went to their BOM radars and saw the mass blowing our way.

Within a few minutes the plan of action was decided and we settled around to wait it out, finishing our BBQ so that the hot stuff was well and truly cooled off and packed down before any wind arrived.

When it hit – it hit well and truly. The 40 or so of us were huddled under the shelter at the park, getting wet, but overall we were safe. It was a typical Queensland Thunderstorm, lots of noise and fury, wind ripping through the park pulling and blowing what it could. Rain and hail fell to make it a real storm.

Part way through it we all look ed somewhat amused, but highly concerned as well, as a massive “jumping castle“, that had been part of a group activity further up the park, blew down the main road. Covering the whole road, and luckily not getting tangled on any electric wires, it barreled into and wrapped itself around the local Matilda Service Station sign and a light post. The Matilda sign went down, but the castle didn’t go any further.

It was retrieved by its owners as soon as the storm stopped. No doubt there was some damage to it, and it caused damage to a few things on its journey.

In the distance a jumping castle getting packed onto its trailer.

On reflection the question I kept asking my self was:

Why did they not pay attention to the warning signs?

Why wasn’t the jumping castle deflated?

Or if it is tough enough to withstand a storm, ensure its storm lashings were heavily secured?

Thankfully no one got hurt. They could have. Not because anyone did anything negligent or purposefully wrong.

But the warning signs were not heeded.

There was enough time!

The Global Financial Crisis felt the same way for me. As a business owner, I felt it in my bones that we were living on borrowed time. That things were stretching beyond capacity, even without the deep understanding of the real root causes overseas. You could smell it in the air. You could see it in the greed for more, more of everything.

We made some changes, we prepared for the possibility, things worked out alright for us. It didn’t mean we avoided the storm but we were well braced to shelter from it.

There were plenty of others that didn’t pay attention to the warnings though, and s0me of them needed up careering off their moorings too.

Sometimes we need to lift our head from our digital displays and magic devices and look around us.

Sometimes everything you need to see is heading directly towards you with a clear message.

Well that’s what ireckon!

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