Have I told you about the warri?

It’s the type of wind that gets under your skin and makes the kids a little wild. It sets the horses running down a paddock rolling their eyes. It sends the roos into the dense scrub, and it tells the grownups they need to start tying things down.

Some get a little fractious when the warri picks up and the trees begin to sway and whip their branches. Some, like my funny old cat (sorry, middle-aged cat) like to chuck maddies around the house and tell me the clouds scudding across the darkened sky have just dumped a shower of water. Those clouds are moving so quickly though, they don’t have time to keep raining in one place. They need to move on.

When the warri starts to sing, we listen. She calls around the corners of a house, or moans up a sand track so old it has made its own hollow in the dunes. This is really the only time she can sing, the warri, and so we let her sing and tell her how beautiful she sounds.

Sometimes, when we do that, she stops, she hesitates, almost as if she is saying. “What?” It’s as if she doesn’t want us to compliment her on her sound. Perhaps she is used to people being afraid of her, and for someone to say she sounds beautiful makes her question whether she’s done it right.

But… she’s the wind. She’s the warri. Everything she does is right. How could it be wrong? When she hears this, she dumps more tears from the sky and might think to herself, ‘This is good. Let’s move on.’

We should never take her for granted. She can be a little destructive, and if she has warned us she is coming, we should have listened, and we need to be careful of where we drive and where we sit if we’re outside, and where we need to keep ourselves safe along the roads.

This is a good day to build cubbies and forts inside, and take away all the special things that can be broken and hide them in cupboards. This is the type of day the children will want to go outside and let the wind flap their hair and spray their faces with water. Sometimes, for a short while, we might let them, but only if it’s safe. Otherwise, perhaps we will allow them into the biggest room in the house to make their special games of hide and seek and let them plunk away on an old toy piano.

It’s the warri.