Toowoomba

There had been a lot of rain over the weekend and so on Monday morning we thought it would be a good idea to head up to Toowoomba and see how Birdwood fared - we could stop and check Wayne and Joan's place at Laidley on the way - and visit the antique shops in Toowoomba - sounded like a good idea. So Lee, Joan, Jesse, Louisa, Max and I set off.

So we left home at 10 am and made it home at 9pm that night. We stopped for a short lunch of pies, stopped for petrol and for a few minutes at the creek near Gowrie Junction. Otherwise we were driving around Toowoomba finding a way around the floods.

It was quite the adventure but we really had no idea what we missed until we saw the news that night.

Had we been an hour later to get up to Toowoomba we would have been in Withcott when the floods hit, had we gone to the health food shop for lunch instead of the pie shop we would have been in Toowoomba when the floods hit, had we been half an hour later leaving we would have been caught in Toowoomba and we'd still be there.

Lee navigated while I drove through the flooded streets - Lee found us a route along the top of the Toowoomba ridge until the worst passed. We phoned Roger and he worked out that the road down to Warwick was still open so we headed for home that way. Roads were closed behind us and our trip was uneventful - except for Max's goofing around.

Impossible things happened in Toowoomba and we are grateful to have skirted around it all. Now we are glued to our televisions, praying in gratitude and grief and waiting for it all to be over.

It's surreal at Samford - wet of course - there's some damage to roads of course - but it's a wet wonderland relative to the rest of South East Queensland.