So I got up, and my wife had already done the 'thinking' thing. She got a couple of plastic containers to catch the drips while I stood there thinking about how I am going to fix it, at 3am in the middle of a downpour.
Now, I live in Central Queensland. Have done so for a little over two years and we have never had that much rain that it starts to seep through our ceiling. Well I guess today is a day of firsts. First blog post. First time the leaks in our roof have become apparent....oh yeah....AND THE FIRST TIME THE WHOLE AREA UNDERNEATH MY HOUSE COMPLETELY FLOODED.
Pardon me. Got a bit excited there. For those of you not familiar with the area, Central Queensland has been suffering some torrential rainfall in the last couple of months. The river that flows through my town is swelling due to all of the rain coming from up north. We were already suffering minor flooding throughout the town, but our house was unaffected. However, we had a total of 165mm in a little over an hour, and there was really nowhere for the water to flow to. Except maybe under our house as I have just mentioned. To make things worse, we live at the bottom of a small mountain. So when it rains, we get all of that water flowing down to us too.
At about 3:45am, it was time to move the car before it went under. My wife also runs a retail business only a small distance from our house, so I decided to take a drive to the shop to see if it was OK. As I stated a little earlier, we are at the bottom of a hill, so by driving up the hill, I knew I would be able to get through.
Incorrect…the massive downpour was washing so much water down that each intersection running horizontal to the lay of the land was also flooding. I managed to get all the way down to where the shop is situated, but had to turn back. There was no way in to it. Well at least not without swimming. Turned around and headed back home.
That whole trip, which would normally take me about 5 minutes, took half an hour. Got home and thought…”Where’s the dog??”. She had herself trapped under the house and the water was rising. Man, you should have felt her heartbeat as I picked her up and carried her to safety. Funny though, how the cliché goes: ‘Every cloud has a silver lining’. The dog had to come inside with us, but she was filthy. Not only from the flood waters, but due to the fact that I had not managed to give her a bath in over a month. So she got a bath. Bonus! Yeah ask her if she feels the same way.
Anyways, by now the rain had ceased, but the damage was done. Took about another 5 hours for the water to recede enough for us to begin the task of cleaning up. Actually the clean up wasn’t too bad. Most of the stuff that was damaged can’t be touched until the insurance assessors check it out. My wife was pretty devastated though. Lost a heck of a lot of her keepsakes. We had them stored in plastic containers to keep the weather out…LOL…Didn’t work. The shop is OK, by the way. Completely dry except for a small amount of rain seeping in under the door.
Hey here’s a view from our 3 year olds bedroom window:
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