by Catriona Mills

Strange Conversations: Part Three Hundred and Forty

Posted 4803 days ago in by Catriona

Today, I spotted a tiny possum in the mulberry tree, prompting a long Twitter discussion, mostly with myself, about whether he was sleeping or dead. Since our house is something of an elephant burial ground for possums (you know that phrase makes sense), I assumed dead.

Until he moved.

Then I assumed zombie possum.

After dark, we checked with Nick’s flood-inspired LED headlamp, and he was gone:

ME: So the jury returns a verdict of “not dead.”
NICK: Good.
ME: But remains out on a verdict of “undead.”
NICK: Ja. Listen to ze possums of ze night. Vhat beautiful music they make.
ME: Darling, possums are nocturnal anyway.
NICK: Ja. Bugger.

Strange Conversations: Part Three Hundred and Thirty-Nine

Posted 4804 days ago in by Catriona

The futility of trying to convince Nick to let me buy another TV lamp, this one shaped like a chess piece:

NICK: Shipping antiques from overseas stresses me out too much
ME: But I might love it more than I love you!
NICK: OMG!
ME: I said “might.”
NICK: But I am alive and squishy!
ME: Okay, ew.

After the Flood

Posted 4804 days ago in by Catriona

(Last flood-related post, I promise!)

Strange Conversations: Part Three Hundred and Thirty-Eight

Posted 4811 days ago in by Catriona

Nick and I were discussing this post on the Superuser question boards, in which someone asks what the A and B drives on a computer are used for.

ME: You’re right. That does make me feel incredibly old.
NICK: Told you.
ME: On the other hand, though, I’ve never even seen an eight-inch disk.
(Pause)
ME: That’s a sentence you’d want to enunciate very, very carefully.

Watching the Waters Recede: Part Three

Posted 4811 days ago in by Catriona

Watching the Waters Recede: Part Two

Posted 4811 days ago in by Catriona

Watching the Waters Recede: Part One

Posted 4811 days ago in by Catriona

Rising and Falling Waters

Posted 4811 days ago in by Catriona

Though I have no photographs of the flood’s peak, I do have photographs showing the way in which the water rose and fell around us.

Rising:

Falling:

Rising. (The mass of water behind the sign is the Brisbane River, which broke its banks here—as it did everywhere else):

Falling. (The dark mark across the sign shows the flood’s peak):

Rising:

Falling:

Post-Flood Blogging

Posted 4811 days ago in by Catriona

It’s not, I imagine, good Internet etiquette to disappear from your blog just after posting photographs of rising floodwaters. But shortly after posting the last photographs, we lost power (at noon on Wednesday), and we’ve only just had it restored. This suburb was hit, and hit hard. We were lucky and sustained no property damage, but we did take the police’s advice and evacuate on Wednesday night.

The reason we evacuated was that this was the view from our bedroom window:

All Wednesday, we watched the floodwaters rise up the street towards the house. By afternoon, with the flood expected to peak at 5.5 metres at 4 am, we knew we couldn’t stand it any longer. 5.5 metres would put the floodwater inside the lower storey of our house, maybe right up to the floorboards of the top storey, and we didn’t want to make this more difficult for everyone by trying to leave in the wee small hours. So we grabbed the emergency bag we’d packed that morning and fled to friends on a higher hill.

We came back on Thursday to find the waters, peaking nearly a metre lower than anticipated, had stopped on our boundary line.

This is a street of hills and valleys, like so many Brisbane streets. All the hills stayed dry, and all the valleys flooded. We’re perched on the side of the smallest hill on the street, and that freak of geography was enough to keep us dry, for which we’ll always be grateful.

So I have no photographs of the flood’s peak, but I imagine many of you have had your fill of flood photographs in the five days we’ve been without power. I’m posting these photographs anyway, because this is my street and my suburb: all these photographs were taken within two streets of my home and now, five days later, it’s almost impossible to believe what they looked like then.

Rising Waters: Part Two

Posted 4816 days ago in by Catriona

Rising Waters: Part One

Posted 4816 days ago in by Catriona

Overnight Flooding: Part Two

Posted 4816 days ago in by Catriona

The last one is the view from my back verandah, over the neighbour’s roof.

Overnight Flooding: Part One

Posted 4816 days ago in by Catriona

Local Flooding: Part Two

Posted 4817 days ago in by Catriona

Local Flooding: Part One

Posted 4817 days ago in by Catriona

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