Jody and Glen's Blog: January 2011

So as everyone is aware January 11th 2011 has been a nightmare for many QLD people.

We were very lucky and escaped with only a yard full of mud. We did have our own version of home made sandbags that we did up with shopping bags and soil, then we went over to try and help out the neighbours as much as we could. Once we'd done that all we could do was sit back, watch and wait and deal with whatever was thrown at us! I managed to take some pictures during the day as it was all happening.

In between each torrential downpour (not that it stopped raining normally in the middle) which would last 30-40 minutes at a time we would be outside checking on the water levels. Making sure the drains we're coping in our yard and weren't getting blocked and preparing for the next wave of torrential rain. We had no water come in the house - other than our wet, muddy clothes and we also had no leaks in the roof. We were VERY lucky compared to a lot of the state of QLD. WE feel terrible for the poor people of Toowoomba who had no warning at all. At least we knew it had been raining for 3 weeks on and off and then was raining all night when we went to bed on the 10th. I was awoken at 4am with thunder and lightening and got up and went to the loo. As i was washing my hands I looked out the en-suite door and saw a river running past the door. I remember thinking... "sh*t that's a lot of water".

So i went to the garage and have a look at the side of the house where the drainage is and where we get the most water from the block being cut out and from the hill. The water was up to the brickwork and the rain was still torrential. At this point I went in and woke up Glen and said told him he better get up and come and help me sort the drains out. We have no idea what was coming or what was to come.

Then while we were going outside we saw the neighbours making up their "sandbags" as we were heading out to do the same thing. Once we'd sandbagged and blocked up as much as we could we headed over to the neighbours to help them out. They'd pretty much done everything they could at that point, but they'd woken up to the water lapping their doors. Anyway here's the pictures we took from the day! We couldn't really get out of our area so the pictures we have are only really of our street and house.

Driving around the streets of Caboolture now and seeing all the giant potholes and debris here is amazing. I can only imagine the clean up Brisbane, Ipswich, Toowoomba, Rockhampton and so many other places are facing at the moment. It's been a crazy week so far and we've just had news that there's a cyclone forming in Cairns at the moment. It's expected to move away from land, so fingers crossed.

The rain

The view that I woke up to in the morning. Waterfalls from the cut out and a river running past the en-suite and bedroom.

More water. You can see a fence picket laying down in the water so it was deep in the morning.

Our Neighbours from yard.

Glen in clothes set 1 for the day. Up and digging the trenches and making "sandbags"

Checking the drains

While i was taking the photo's the water was getting deeper.

More water falls in the yard.

And more waterfalls

The drain working hard to clear away the water

Change of clothes two and checking on the drains again

And then his shoes broke!

We sandbagged and made barriers of what we could. The construction mesh help back a fair bit of water too. But we still had water up the bricks.

using the hose to syphone the water into the front yard to go the creek.

Our front yard and the crates we've been using. As i mentioned it's been raining almost every day for 3 weeks. So this was helping to A) stop the mud from coming in the house and B) stop clumsy me from falling ass over tit every time i left the house. Now they're forming a bridge for us!

Ours and our neighbours backyard.

in the distance you can see what is normally a creek with a slow trickle. All day we were watching it rise up and down. We saw a gum tree go floating by at one point too.

Glen heading over to the Neighbours to check how their sandbags were holding up.

then once we'd done all we could we couldn't do much more the kids in teh street came out to play.

Ok so it's been a while since out last post. December seemed to fly past in a blur. We were both really busy with work etc and time just got away from us! But here we are now.

Pictures are in the wrong order because I always forget to the put the NEWEST pictures first! Silly me!

So early December I think it was we got all our Stuff delivered here from Melbourne! BIG YAY! We had boxes and boxes and boxes of stuff - some we still haven't gotten through yet! But We got my BIG dinning room table back and enough beds here so that when my Mum, Dad and Sister arrived - they had a place to sleep! YAY!

Then we put up the Christmas tree. This was our first ever Christmas tree (the traditional kind) that we've ever had in our 7 years together. Most other years we haven't bothered, or we had the Aussie gum tree Christmas. So this was really fun. Joan and Ron gave us loads of decorations which were all lovely, but there were more decorations than there was tree so we decided to have a silver and purple theme this year. We didn't have an angel or a star to go on top - so we used a snowman that Lisa made. He was a bit suicidal and kept falling off though!

Then the wedding invitations were printed off and collated and sent out. We had a bit of a production line going and glen and i had fun making the invitations.