But we can’t change the weather even though back in the early days people tried everything to make it rain including seeding clouds, saying special prayers in churches and holding Aboriginal rain dances, all to no avail.

People at Charleville were more adventurous. In 1902 in the grip of the longest-running drought in Queensland’s history meteorologist Clement Wragge had six Steiger vortex cannons built and set up in strategic places around the town. Charging the horn-shaped cannons with gunpowder, he waited for suitable clouds before firing ‘rain-producing gas’ into the air at two-minute intervals but nothing happened.

Townspeople in Charleville were on their knees and rain was the key to their survival so they raised the money for the cannons, similar to those used in Europe by Italian wine makers to dispel hail-bearing clouds. Invented by Austrian scientist Albert Steiger, the cannons failed to work in Charleville and one blew up with shrapnel narrowly missing onlookers.

But soaking rain finally fell at the end of 1902, ending the devastating drought. Of the 13 cannons built in Queensland, most were broken up for scrap metal. Two were kept and they’re in Bicentennial Park in Charleville for everyone to see.

A few years back orchardists in Orange set up similar hail cannons around Canobolas and fired them every time it looked like a storm but they were eventually scrapped because of noise complaints.

When Orange people travel to Lithgow and then hop on one of the new inter-city trains being built in Korea they’ll be facing backwards because the two-by-two seats will be fixed. Reversible seats are popular among passengers but Transport for NSW says they are more complex, heavier and needed more maintenance than fixed seats.

The $2.5 billion new trains go into service early next year but for us in early 2020 initially to Mt Victoria because they won’t fit through the tunnels into Lithgow until they’re widened. The trains are also too wide to fit past stations after Springwood until the platforms are modified. That’s good planning for you.

Things are never boring in Sydney with Lord Mayor Clover Moore and Co continually coming up with madcap ideas that, if nothing else, make people step back and take a deep breath or two.

She has plans for a giant-sized $2.5 million plastic milk crate in Belmore Park called Pavilion, part of a multi-million dollar public art initiative that also includes a 50-metre high steel arch that looks like falling toilet paper and shaped like Casper the Friendly Ghost.

Her latest $85,000 project is called Art and About and is designed to attract the world’s most way-out artists to produce unusual installations to be plonked around Sydney. Surely it’s an opening for Chris Gryllis to rescue his Big Hat from Yeoval where it was banished when nobody here wanted it?

It copped lots of flak, was described as crass, tacky and a waste of money even though he paid for it himself so he put it in his backyard for a while before banishing it to Yeoval. That probably fits Clover Moore’s Art and About and could save Chris’ Big Hat from obscurity.