If there's anything of which we can be sure it is that no matter what we plan for, something we could never have imagined instead comes true.
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It's the unpredictability of just about everything we try to make predictable.
We can, it's said, prepare for the worst and hope for the best, yet sometimes this still leaves us a long way short.
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And then you can take the fool's approach and throw the best of preparations out the window; just consider US President Donald Trump's decision to axe his nation's pandemic response team two years ago.
Whenever there is a national calamity of some description, criticisms abound on how things could have been better, how advice beforehand was ignored, how expert recommendations were not implemented.
Australia has only recently experienced such a thing with the horrendous bushfires that plagued the nation for months, an event our fire chiefs had tried to warn the federal government about but to no avail.
At the same time, Australia was going through the perennial challenge of drought.
It's always been part of our home, this, the driest continent; but it has become far more commonplace as the years have turned hotter through climate change.
Yes, reducing carbon emissions is absolutely critical to reining in ever-increasing average global temperatures.
But outside of that we have to work around the vagaries of the weather as best we can.
That's the lot of our farmers en masse, and it's an incredible tribute to them that despite the sometimes desperate times they increasingly face they remain some of the most efficient producers in the world.
It makes the timely return of our long-gone rains so welcome and for our farmers, so deserving.
We might not be able to predict whether this early autumn break will be backed with more rain when this is needed in the months ahead, but at the very least it has created a degree of optimism so sorely needed in these difficult times.
