Being safe in the wet season

I travelled to town over  a week ago for mini school...what a blur, such a busy week, lots of learning for us and the kids. There are school lunches to make, traffic to contend with, sessions to do, first aid course, some babysitting, haircuts, physio, dentist, an oven to buy and some random browsing.

However all that aside, public knowledge of closed roads and water heights don't apply to our road. Why? I must find that out, because more and more people are wanting to travel to the beautiful destination that lies at the end of our road.

Many phone calls to get a status report on the road, requiring a small drive by my brother to be able to report not much except "I can't get that close yet" eventually became a more accurate "estimate" of creek heights.

By Friday morning, an estimate of .8 revealed that by Saturday morning it would be low enough to cross....the window of opportunity.

As I rose early to finish packing the car,

I got the phone call to say 50mm fell overnight, reported "not a hope in hell of getting over the creek".

At present I am stranded, at Mum and Dad's place, away from my home and husband. It has been 8 days since we left home, it has been 8 days since he has seen another human being. We have had 625mm since Australia Day. The rain at home is irrelevant as it doesn't stop me, the large catchment spanning many, many, many kilometres, way up into the the Shoalwater Bay military training area does.

Reports of someone trying to tow a caravan into a creek with 5ft (1.5m) of water over the culvit leaves me seething at the stupidity of people...people who should know better. Not only do they endanger their own lives but the lives of "untrained" people to rescue them and their vehicles.

However, we are safe, we are comfortable, we are happy (mostly), he has food, we have telecommunications (having facebook friends on the road is also a very handy way to get up to date road reports), we have had a wet season so we have lots to be grateful for.