Wednesday, January 5, 2011

What a Finish for the Year !

What a lonely and devastating sight to see. The rain continued in December and I think shocked a lot of people. This is the supposedly unfloodable bridge over the Burnett River at Mingo Crossing in a photo taken by my friend Patty. Two cousins experienced the flooding in their houses in Mundubbera upstream from Mingo earlier in the week. Friends have been cut off for weeks in their homes and trying to enjoy Christmas on their own.
In all of this chaos before Christmas, Archie returned on the day the bridge came out of the water, weaved his magic in wrecking our kitchen,some of the photos are out of order but I think you can see the changes. The old pantry doorway has been filled in with some overhead cupboards, the bench tops replaced with his suggestion for the laminate ( he knows his stuff!!!)



While he was here with his truck "bogged on our lawn" it RAINED and RAINED and once again the water went over the bridge.


A 16 hour power blackout occurred, the work stopped, the rain eased, the power guys were flown in by helicopter to fix the power problem and hey presto, Archie changed the end of the kitchen to this

FROM THIS

I certainly have lots of storage space, and it is not filled yet. He also made built in cupboards for our bedroom. We are very pleased with Archies's work.
The river also dropped late on Christmas Eve allowing the truck across so he could spend Christmas with his young family instead of being stuck with us. Mind you it came back up twice as high a few days later to peak over 9m. All of this water flows down to Bundaberg so no wonder they had a huge flood as every creek and river in the Burnett catchment was full.
One can only look at photos in sheer disbelief at the devastation happening in Queensland at this time. Of course no creative sewing has been happening but the real patching has once again been completed in the enforced indoor jobs. No outside renovations have been attempted. I did notice some mould coming on some paintwork. ARGH!!!
What a finish to the old year, so am hoping the New Year is a bit quieter than the last month has been, but not looking too good at this stage.More rain has been falling and the floods are still happening. I guess we have to just tolerate the conditions and do our best.