Time of floods

Several of my friends living in different suburbs of the Gold Coast have rung me to find out if we are flooded out of our home. The local weather reported flooding at Mudgeeraba (my suburb) and even named the road that runs past our little Court (cul-de-sac) as being flooded.


Since you readers of my blog live in different parts of the world and may have seen television footage of the dreadful devastation by the flooding in Queensland I thought I had better show you how we are faring here.
 

Click on picture to see it larger

This first image was taken from the room in which I write this blog. I am looking over the top of the swimming pool and the lichen covered shade house and the corner of Colin's big shed is just visible. As you can see, the creek that runs (sometimes) at the back of the block of land has spilled over into our next door neighbour's land. A few weeks ago we had the creek rise and it came above the little shrub on the left of the palm tree over the fence, so you can see that we are in no danger of being swamped just yet.

You may wonder what those orange thing are! They are the lorikeets flying in for breakfast! I went out and stood by their feed dish to take this photo and they assumed it was food I had brought out with me!
From this picture you can tell how wet and boggy the land has become. My son tried to change direction with a trailer near the intersecting fence we have through the block and became stuck in the mud! We have a few very deep wheel ruts to flatten out!
In other floods that we have experienced here the waters have come right up to and higher than that old wagon wheel leaning against the big gum tree. So this shows you that for the moment we have nothing to worry about from that direction. So far we do not have water on our land. The water you see in this picture is a "spoon drain" which takes the run-off water from the road to the creek at the bottom of the block. It is a water easement that runs between us and our other neighbour.
Many Queensland towns are experiencing floods like never before and there will be a lot of broken people when they return to their homes and find how much damage the flood water has caused inside their homes. The plaster board walls will all have to be replaced because they will have swelled like sponges, the timber frames will be saturated and the smell - it doesn't bear thinking about.
So do not be concerned for AJ and Co. We are safe and dry.
AJ