I left the house on Saturday night after spending the whole day relocating the contents of the shed to higher ground. I wore wellies and an old weatherproof jacket that I once used to use on the boat, bright yellow so it would be easy to find me if I had collapsed anywhere. Mick (neighbour) was extremely stressed but for myself I was just tired and seemed to be taking things in my stride but it was when I finally got to relax that the gravity of the situation began to set in.

I never emptied the shed when I returned to the house after my travels and so I moved everything to the deck on the back of the house. Everything downstairs including blinds and curtains were taken down and moved upstairs in the off chance that the predicted flood levels might not happen. So many amendments to the anticipated levels, so no one really knew what was going to happen. The rain had been relentless over the past week and as much as 700 mm had been recorded in places near home. The dam levels went from 56% to 162% in just a few days, so it was very worrying.

On the Sunday I went back to see what the damage was and I was very calm and my frame of mind was “what will be, will be.” The rain had stopped of course and the humidity was through the roof. I picked up a Vietnamese Baguette and headed for home. There was still water over the road but it was quite far from the house and so as I turned into the driveway I was pleasantly surprised to see that instead of utter devastation, instead I had a very large water feature on the back lawn……….however there was about 400 mm of water up the side of the shed.

Debris littered the park behind the shed and there were lots of passion fruit bobbing around in the water in the garden, I even saw some small fish that must have thought it was great to get out of the confines of their creek. But all in all I had escaped the heartache and cleanup that I was half expecting to come home too. Mick’s house had water go underneath up to about 1200 mm and he lost tables and chairs, but he was also very relieved to see that the water had not reached the second floor because he has no insurance and he would not find it easy to recover as he is 74 years old. I was very glad for him because he was so worried when we left here the previous evening.

Of course there was no power, it had been cut as a safety precaution……….water and electricity don’t mix. The power was off until Friday afternoon and so I stayed with Peter and Cheryl, but I commuted each day back to the house which was a round trip of over 100 km and the wee car got quite the workout and was not happy.

I came home on the Friday evening and I must admit it was great to get back into my own bed and have a good night’s sleep although I wasn’t looking forward to the week ahead trying to put everything back where it should be. I’m getting too old for this shit. Both Mick and myself were saying that we don’t ever want to go through this again and so it might be a case of selling up and moving to higher ground. I’m over 10 years younger than Mick and I am absolutely knackered, not sure how he is holding it together.