The Water Recedes

The flood waters are receding now. Thankfully they didn't get as high as they did in '74, not that that's any consolation for people that have lost everything this time.

As I wrote in my last post, my step-daughter and her husband evacuated from their house in Ipswich on Tuesday morning. The Bremer river that runs past their house was predicted to get up to 22 metres, which would have been over their roof. It got to 19.4 metres, so hopefully there isn't quite as much damage there as we were expecting.

They originally evacuated to Jess's dad's place in Salisbury, a suburb of Brisbane. Yesterday morning the water started to come up at Salisbury as well, so Jess and Brett are now with us, high and dry with their animals.

Now, when I say animals; as well as our dog, cat, cockatiel, 16 lorikeets and 3 chooks, we now also have another dog, 4 more cats, 2 more chooks, several fish, a baby kookaburra, a turtle, a blue-tongued skink and last but not least, Cookie the scaley-breasted lorikeet who's sitting in our dining room imitating telephones and laughing at his own jokes. Jess and Brett are wildlife carers like us, hence the kooka and the turtle. They mainly do reptiles, so thankfully they don't have any snakes in care at the moment, else they'd be here with us as well.

It's good to see that people are pulling together to help out, like I knew they would. Jess and Brett have been getting calls with offers of help. We've also had calls from people that don't personally know Jess and Brett but know they've been evacuated.