Will It Rain Today? It Probably will in one of the Wettest Places In The World!

Will It Rain Today? Well, if you live in England, the answer is most likely to be ‘yes’! ;P But it’s usually that annoying drizzle that makes you feel depressed.

But there are some places in the world that measure their rainfall in metres – not in paltry millimetres. You can literally see the raindrops bouncing off the ground!

This place is called Tully in Far North Queensland, Australia and I checked it out after Europcar Australia lent me a car to drive around in for a few days!

It doesn’t rain every day in Tully, but when it does, it buckets down from a great height. In fact, Tully is one of the wettest towns in Australia, located just south of Cairns in Far North Queensland.

The ‘Golden Gumboot’ award is given to the town that receives the highest amount of annual rainfall for that calendar year. It’s usually one of the towns surrounding Tully. And the town that wins it is usually pretty proud of the achievement.

This gumboot is the same height as the highest ever amount of rainfall recorded in a year in a town in Australia – 7.9 metres! Way back in 1950!

Yes, that’s a truckload of rain. You can marvel at the crazy amount of rainfall this place receives via a number of photos and displays in and around the Golden Gumboot.

Will It Rain Today In Tully? Well, definitely in the Wet Season!

Just down the road, Mount Bellenden Ker holds the highest ever rainfall recorded in one year in Australia – over 12 metres. This place regularly makes the ‘wettest places in the world’ type lists. Because it’s so damp, it’s a haven for leeches and I remember one of my mates undertaking a hike up Mount Bellenden Ker, only to have a leech attach to the white of his eyeball as a reward for his efforts. It wasn’t pleasant!

Poor old Tully also seems to be a target for large cylones (you know, like a hurricane or typhoon) that can occur in the wet season. Most recently, Cyclone Yasi, one of the biggest storms ever to be recorded in the world, slammed into Tully in 2011 and gave it a belting. Luckily, no one was killed as a result of the cyclone. But everything is fine now and the region definitely needs your tourism dollars – so if you’re ever up in Cairns, it’s worth taking a small drive or bus trip down to Tully and Mission Beach to take a short holiday.

Back in the Golden Gumboot, there are a lot of great photos – take a look at this old school photo taken in a flooding event in Tully. Back in the day when mobile phones didn’t exist!

So if you’re going to visit Far North Queensland in the wet season, you’re probably get stuck in Tully if you’re travelling through because the roads do become flooded during high rainfall events!

But it’s worth experiencing a torrential downpour at least once in your life!

Thanks once again to Europcar Australia for lending me the car to check Tully out!