We had been looking forward to this trip for so long and so course ‘sod’s law’ came into effect – the worst UK winter in living memory before we left and the prospect of a disastrously flooded Brisbane just when we said ‘we want to live in Brisbane for 6 weeks and enjoy this lovely city’.
Over the last weeks we watched flood news move up from last to first item on the UK news and despaired – for the city and for our holiday! Very flat as we left home but some spoiling by EVA Air (great flight) started the recuperation and because our house at Sandgate is in a safe area our arrival was normal, lush green and hot. I declared my teabags and Cup’o’soups at the airport as emergency rations and we were soon in a taxi on clear roads to our resort.
Our weatherboard house is solid and traditional with a palm and fern shaded garden, lawns and sunbeds, and we have all we need. Sandgate is a lovely, elegant old seaside resort and we have explored the many shops. Plenty of food at Woolworths, lots of great cafés and restaurants and visitor amenities. We spent the evening watching hundreds of thousands of Flying Foxes (fruit bats) flapping silently in a pink sky to their coastal roosts for the night, and warning our two resident kookaburras in the shrubs by the bedroom window not to wake us too early! We haven’t been to the beach yet but they tell us it it covered in debris which is very rapidly being cleared away by the council and an army of volunteers.
Plenty of crying but nobody’s moaning! The good Aussie spirit has risen tenfold and already a mass clear-up is on the way with everybody pulling together hard – councils, workers and a 12,000 strong volunteer People’s Army - that on the first day!’. Free public transport, refuges, free food and water exemplifies a caring local government which puts its people first!
After we have finished a marathon sleep-in we will tell you more!
By the way! The Gabba didn’t flood!