Inundation - the most terrifying day ever

This morning started like any other this week, flooded in, wet, dark, but with the knowledge of what happened at Toowoomba yesterday.  After some skype calls to mum and friends to reassure them we were oke I went to check out the yard to see the height of today's flood. What followed was the most terrifying day that either Michael or I have ever had. The flood came up within an hour, with the creek bursting its banks, and then the dam overflowing from the wall closest to us (whichy it never does). 

For the first time ever we could see the water on the dam from our house verandah (I mean that water in the normal body of the dam), and then its silver shimmer as it started to spill over the top. The sight of the dam going over on the wrong wall was the scariest thing I have ever seen. It never does that, not in the time the farmer has been here, and it meant that the water in the yard came up in minutes.

In between running around trying to pack (to go where?) and on the phone to the farmer and the neighbour with the cows (who quite handily is in the SES), we watched the water rise steadily and quickly.  By 7:30am it was at the bottom step of our house. It surged through our shed and laundry and into our shed store room. It carried away the empty water tank near the shed and deposited it down the paddock near the gate.

The water surrounded the house so efficiently that there was no place that was not rushing water.  It flowed under the house and you could feel the pillars being battered by the water.

Somehow, our neighbour knew that the water would not get any higher and told us to watch it, and to call her if it did, as she would arrange a helicopter out of here. I dont know how she knew that - this being an unprecedented flood, but she did and we watched that step for 2 more hours.

At 11:00am we went to inspect the damage in our shed. We spent all day yesterday cleaning it out and rearranging boxes, because we were bored and had no idea what was to come today.  If we had known we would have save the comic collection (which are Michael's pride and joy) , my uni books and textbooks, my doll collection, my diaries (written since I was 9), a collection of children's books I'd saved for years, Michael's golf clubs, my winter clothes and the box of clothes for the poor people. As well as all of our luggage and the moving boxes that we've saved from all of our moves.

Some of the fly screens we've put aside for repair are sitting down the the front gate, we can see them lodged there against the fence.

We thought we were ok after that inundation but it turned out it was just the first one. At 1:00pm we got hit with another storm, more severe than the first, which lasted for 3 hours.  It rained solidly the whole time and once again we watched the water come up around the car and the house.

As you can imagine I was beside myself.  We must have spent 8 hours outside today on the verandah watching the water. We had no way to get out except helicopter and knew that there were people in much greater need for that, despite our neighbour's kind offer (she also offered us a food drop, which was nice but we did not take up). There have been 10 people lost in the past two days (confirmed dead), which is horrible to think of so close to home. It is just a ghastly situation.

To eleviate the incredible nervous energy and terror I felt every time I looked at the water, I went inside and started putting things up high. I pulled out drawers and stacked them on beds, all low lying books went on the bed, all my scrapbooking stuff, my wine books, Michael's cook books, my remaining clothes, my jewellry, handbags, shoes, DVD's, technology, plates, good cutlery, special kitchen stuff, very good wine,  even the rug off the floor went up high.

In the middle of it I got a call from the girl who was taking the work phone for the day who asked me prices for a conference enquiry for a lady who obvious lives on Mars (the client refused to understand apparently that the hotel was closed, that all the staff were flooded out and that most of us were preparing for the worst).

We finally felt prepared for whatever might happen, having nowhere to go and nothing else to do but watch the water.  We discussed how we would climb onto the roof (through the manhole and bust out through the tin roof). We came up with the lunatic idea that if by chance the water dropped we would take the car and drive up one of the surrounding hills and camp above the water line, so that at least we were safe. (My dad reminded me that a helicopter would not find us perched on the side of a hill and that all sorts of nasty creatures would want to share our tent).

We were very lucky.  By 4:30pm the rain eased and at 5:00pm the mist that had enshrouded us all day had lifted. We did not have any logs run into the house, though they passed us by. We saw some fish trying to swim back again the flood (no, I dont know what kind of fish they were, unhappy ones probably). By 6:00pm after an early dinner we could breathe for a moment.

 We watched the devasting news on TV about the flooding that is expected tonight in Ipswich and tomorrow in Brisbane and feel so sad for those people who have been told that they WILL be flooded, not IF. The storm surge from Toowoomba, plus today's rain and the need to release water from the Wivenhoe catchment means that tonight Ipswich will get rivers at 22m, with estimated 9000 houses due to go under in Ipswich and Brisbane. All those people, who, like us this morning, had to choose a few things to pack, and leave to be safe. We would have given anything to leave today and be safe. But we are lucky that we did not have the horrible situation of knowing there is no chance of saving the house.

The pictures below show the story of our day and the horror that we felt. Now we are taking it in turns to sleep as we are supposed to get another heavy shower sometime tonight.

About 6:30 / 7:00am

About 7:15am

About 7:30am - when we started to freak out big time

Side of house - this is the driveway, completely blocking any chance to drive out

The other side of the house, before the water reached it max height - see the water tank is still there

The dam starting to overflow on the wrong side

The creek is at the far side of the flooded paddock. We have never seen it from the house before.

Another shot of the dam wall and the water coming towards us

Inundation complete - the water tank has disappeared into the paddock

The water flowing into the shed and storeroom and through our backyard and down the driveway

The side of the house. On the far side of the trees  is the creek, its hard to know where one starts and the other ends. We think the debris is a drum or a log.

The Night of the Dogs or The Mystery of the Sofa

Our new lounge, my sister calls it a 'Top Deck' like the chocolate

The most curious thing happened last night. We are not really even sure that it happened this way, but it is the best explanation we can come up with.
Last night we went to bed fairly late, we were up until about 1:30am reading and watching TV. When we went to bed Michael and I had the usual argument about putting the white kitty outside. She has proven herself utterly untrustworthy when left alone with our new sofa. so I won and she got put outside.

We slept like logs.  We slept straight through until 8:00am, I only woke once when the rained stopped for a few minutes. I heard nothing else all night and I am usually a light sleeper (to the point of painful, Michael would say).

Coming out into the lounge this morning, I noticed a piece of bread on the lounge. Then walking into the kitchen I saw the bin had been knocked over and ransacked.  There was garbage everywhere and the front door was also wide open. White kitty was inside,  calmly sleeping on my study chair. Big kitty was sleeping on the bed in the spare room. The lounge had paw prints (muddy ones) all over it and bits of food from the bin.

I immediately suspected the white kitty, who used to go through the bin all the time when we first got her. She is also addicted to the new lounge .

I looked more closely and found that there was black kitty hairs as well as white ones. There were signs of a scuffle, with prints all over the lounge, as if two animals had been playing chasey there. I was very cranky with both kitties and about to banish them, almost overlooking a very strange piece of evidence.

There were black straight thick short fur / hairs that did not belong to either cat.  The first outragous thought that popped into my head was that the two yappy dogs from next door had chased white kitty home and broken in with her (she is very proficient at this - she jumps up and down until she catches the lever handle with her paws) and trashed the garbage and terrorised the cats. Weird, yes I know. But when we walked to the creek yesterday we noticed that next door's dogs were down at their gate, where they never are, and they were barking like nuts.

Today we saw the owner of the dogs trapped on the other side of the flooded creek.  She must have been caught out when the flood started to come up yesterday, or maybe even earlier, as the creek has been up and down like a yoyo since Wednesday. The poor dogs are very likely to have been home alone without food for a couple of days.

We further confirmed our suspicions when the bag of cat food was found demolished outside the back door. The cats have been very uninterested in their food all week, as it is damp from the weather and this bag was torn to pieces.

The most amazing part is that neither of us heard anything at all. Either we were very tired or the rain was very heavy on the tin roof (likely) and covered up the noise of the fight.  Whatever it was will remain a mystery forever. Remarkably, every mark came off the Top Deck lounge as if it were plastic or tiles, not fabric - thanks Harvey Norman for recommending the stain resistant stuff.

A House with Water Views



Michael in our rock garden watching the water on the driveway


Today, being Sunday, we stayed in bed late as it was our day off.  When we got up when had a lazy breakfast and discussed vague plans to go grocery shopping for a party I'm having next week. However, one little delay led to another and before we knew it I was reading a book and Michael was playing on the computer, with all thoughts of shopping on the backburner.


The overflow is to the top left of the picture

 It was lucky for us that we were so lazy this morning, because it started to rain. It rained in buckets and then in garbage bins, then finally in garbage trucks of water. After a couple of hours I fell asleep and had a little snooze.  When  I woke up, I looked out the window and saw that we had water views like we've never had before.

The dam had burst in banks along a much larger section  of bank and water was spilling out and flowing all across the paddocks in all directions, instead of just down the overflow.  We suspect that when we went away last week it was like this, but had not seen it for ourselves. It explains the fish in the driveway anyway.



The creek, about 1m over the actual causeway and about 3m deep overall



The house was surrounded by water on all sides, running down the driveway (12 inches deep - I know because I went out in gumboots and almost came unstuck). The overflow at the side of the house is running in torrents.

We went for a walk to find the cows that had mysterious disappeared and to see the level of the creek at the crossing.  We found the cows outside the front gate (??) and can only conclude that when the farmer cut the bolt on the secondary gate the

other date that maybe he didn't put the latch on properly and they pushed out when the water started to flow.

We walked down to the creek and found the level about 4 inches below the top of the white posts.  Much higher than the last flood, where it barely lapped at the bottom of the white posts. It also had a crazy current and waves.

Considering ourselves very lucky that we had decided against going shopping, we made sure the cows were safe on higher ground in an adjacent and dryer paddock and came home.



The water flowing towards the driveway





Our house surrounded by water



What lurks in the dam and Aftermath of the flood

When we returned home from holidays on Saturday night, we got quite a shock. We had heard from our cat sitter about the flood waters near our house and in town that were so high that he couldn't even get to our street let alone to our house. Then we heard about the fish that he'd found in our driveway.

But on Saturday night when we got home from the airport in the rain and dark we were blown away by the mess that has befallen our driveway. It looks like one of those promotional bush tracks where eager 4WD'ers try our new cars. Here is Michael trying to get out on Sunday morning.

All around our house is debris from where the dam flowed across the paddock. There is a fair chance it would have made it close to our front stairs, which is pretty high. However, once again, not nearly as bad as many people have it north of here.

We decided to throw a line into our dam to see if we could catch any of the mystery driveway fish. In the past we've had guests who've tried and caught nothing but snags on underwater fences. This time, after our Boxing Day lunch of yabbies, we bought an Opera House Net, which is apparently designed to catch things with claws.

A couple of hours later we went back to inspect our haul and found 3 slimy squirming green eels. I was pretty excited, even though the beasties resembled snakes more than anything else (and I'm not a fan of snakes). However Michael did not have any eel receipes on hand and decided to thrown them back. Personally, I was also not looking forward to having 3 live eels in our bathtub to purge. Apparently, the fact that we only caught eels means that they have probably eaten everything else in the dam that could have been tasty. When we have some more time off we will head up the back to the hidden dam (which is muddier) and try again for some yabbies.

On the cow front, the baby moo terrorists have ram raided the new fence around the house and chewed the end of the phone cable. Michael has spent 6 hours under the house in the past two days trying to get it back together and finally succeeded (Telstra told us their first available technician appointment to get it fixed was on 13th January!). We have had to reinforce the fence with bits of junk from the shed and the neighbours are coming (any day now) to electrify it. We are keen to see these cows move on and are having fun telling them all the ways that you can eat beef.

Sunday at 5 o'clock

Sunday at 5 o'clock we ventured out to look at the backyard. It has been raining heavily all day and most of yesterday. Some would say this weather sucks, but Michael and I remember rain falling like this in Marysville, routinely, with an average annual rainfall of over 1000ml, most of it in the winter months where it rained every day (like England).

However today was different (for here), today it has rained since about 10pm last night and has barely let up. We went out to do the shopping at 10:00am, returning home at noon, and since then it has rained so constantly that we have just lived in it, around it, through it.

The water table has not had time to adjust to all this rain, as it has been on and off like this for the last 3 weeks. There is no drying out period, no wind, and the last time we saw the sun it was Monday last week. Therefore every shower adds -what it feels like - a million millimetres to the already saturated land.

We were quite excited to get out and see how the water transforms the property, though apparently there are people in WA who have been sitting on their house roofs for 16 hours waiting for help from a helicopter.

The water is around the house and has broken free from the dam and is running every which way into the spillway. It courses across the paddock and makes creeks where there were none. Most noteable is a dam of laying water, which has sprung up in a dip of the paddock. I started to wade into it, but only ventured about 5 m out, the bottom was muddy and I was not sure how deep it would get. One of the picture here is of a spider running up a piece of grass to escape the flood.

The pictures below show just a little of the flood on our land, and the movie at the bottom is the footage of the creek causeway that has cut us off from the world. Even Michael's new car will not tackle its fast running current.

We know that there are a lot of people affected by this way worse than us, but we have never seen anything like this before in our own backyard. We are in awe.

Flood and the last wedding of the year

Yesterday we worked the last wedding of the year. It was bit of a relief because I haven't been working on many weddings in the last 6 months, as my job doing both weddings and conferencing got too busy and we split the role between my assistant and I. However Erin left the job 2 weeks after I got back from France, which left me with three weddings to finish off for the year.

Each of the last 3 weddings have been totally bizarre, the first drank everything we had in our fridges and more and some how burnt tablecloths and had a food fight. The second was a couple I'd never met, as they had done all of their booking from overseas and arrived on the afternoon of the big day - we had to guess at colours and decor to suit their dresses. The third one last night should have been the most normal. After all, I'd dealt with them orginally last year when they booked and not much had changed since in terms of details.

Its all very well and good to assume, but you cant factor in the weather. It has rained in in QLD for the last week, and while some of the days have not had such heavy falls, there are a couple of days when it has just poured down for the whole day without any break. Out west and on the coast there are a lot of places either on flood alert or actually in flood. Here, while it has been really soggy and muddy and inconvenient to our activities schedule, we have not really seen the water get too high.

However yesterday was one of the major days of rain. As you can imagine, with a wedding this means a long day of traipsing through the wet and mud up and down the hill to our function room. Despite everything with the weather, the wedding went off ok and we got the 100 guests settled into the reception. I was so busy thinking about the wedding and ferrying guests around with umbrellas that I had not really taken any notice of how much rain we'd had besides the fact that it just wouldn't stop.

I mentioned to Michael about 8:00pm that I did not feel ok driving home alone as I was worried our creek might be up, and he has the fancy new 4WD, which remains relatively untested. We set off home at 9:o0pm and when we reached the creek we were very excited. In the dark the water seemed to rage across the road. We got across there ok and drove up to the dam and ford to see how much the overflow was running. The dam is fed by Western Creek, which runs throught the whole farm and down into Grandchester. It takes a couple of days to reach us, being fed by the run off from the hills through the property and then the dam, which is as big as a football field needs to fill up before it floods and spills down to continue the flow of the creek.

The dam over flow and ford were roaring water falls, we could hear it before we reached it. Its a bit hard to get pictures in the dark, so I went back this morning to get some more shots.

The ford just beyond our house that deals with the overflow of the dam. I used to think it was greedy that our dam caught all of the water of the creek and deprived people down stream, but today, looking at the water, I realised that it saves alot of flooding further downstream. Most of the area around the house has had extensive earthworks to create channels for the creek and overflow, before it hits the farms down stream. At least this way the creek causeway will never really get much higher than it is, the dam moderating the flood somewhat. The orginal property never having a dam, the creek would have just flowed through and across the paddocks and in flood would have probably even come up to the house.

The overflow runs parallel to the house and down to the creek that we cross to get to our front gate.

The overflow and ford are usually bone dry and rarely run, even after several days of rain.

The dam, the source of all this water (well the catchment really) and the overflowing section near the back. Looks fairly tranquil from this angle.

The creek causeway we have to cross to get to our house, usually dry. Not a huge flood in these pictures, the water was on its way up, but judging by the mud levels had been up and down all day.

The creek causeway again in day light, with a clear view of how high the water came up during the night.

Still looks a bit dodgy and my car would probably be sad if I tried to cross it.

Since the cows moved in

The week after we got back from France the cows moved back in. Not our cows, not the nice loving cows who are scared of me and happily move away at the drop of a hat, but the neighbour's cows.

The neighbour has a fairly significant herd which they have been rotating daily between our road side and a couple of very worn out paddocks. Quite frankly, it was a bit sad looking at them every day, which is why the farmer who manages this place invited them to put their cows on our part of the property for a couple of months in order to solve our grass problem (and therefore our snake issue).

The new cows all came pregnant, which was fine, we've had baby cows before and they are cuter than puppies. However, this lots have very badly behaved little calves. They like to spend most of their day under the house (despite the addition of more preventative measures). The noise is kind of like listening to a group of kids running around in the 1st floor of a 2 story house. That is, they thump and carry on and fight just like children.

It has started to become a real issue because in the last two weeks they have ripped out our satellite TV cable (our only source of TV) and our phone cable. They have also broken a window and every few days deposit another big poo at the bottom of our front stairs, just where it is convenient to get in the car. The worst part was the other night when I was home alone and knitting on the couch, very peaceful and tranquil, and a loud thump caused me to drop my knitting in fright and I swore, because I am not very good and dropped a stitch.

Their only saving grace is that unlike children, in a couple of weeks they will be too large to fit underneath the house (and they really are very cute when they are fresh and clean and little).

However all of our animals are a little eratic at the moment. The cats will only go outside through the windows, not the doors. The White Kitty climbed on the air conditioner outside our bedroom window while we were sleeping in the guest room and she couldn't get down, so she was stuck up there until 6am and scratched me to bits when I got her down.

In a separate incident White Kitty got locked in our storage room and waited patiently for 8 hours for us to come home from Toowoomba, sitting on Martin's TV box. Michael discovered her while he was in the toilet and saw her looking back at him from the room across the backyard while he looked out the window.

I had a friend drive me home from work last week and in the short time she was here she had to beep at cows on the driveway as they wre being stubborn and wouldnt give way, and dodge the poo using her torch. When she finally got inside our house for the first time ever, the green frog who lives under the sink was jumping around the bathroom and the Big Kitty brought in a mouse which she proceeded to eat on the kitchen floor. My poor friend squealed (which was hilarious) and I had to think back to only a year ago when all of these things would have startled me or made me think I was roughing it in the country.

However I still know I am a newbie when a brown snake climbs the front door of the reception area at work and I am too chicken to go out and help catch it (this afternoon).