Adelaide - Sydney - Brisbane

A lot has happened since the last update and since we're fairly lacy when it comes to blogging, we'll give you a short round-up and some best of-moments.

We spent Christmas in Adelaide where the lovely Gemma was kind enough to take us in! The weather was lovely and hot so we spent a good bit of time at the beach and one of the days was spent in McLaren Vale wine tasting.

Uncle Sean

The table tennis tournament is a long tradition in the family

From Adelaide we went back to Sydney to see the fireworks. The only flight we could get was one leaving on New Years Eve and we landed in Sydney at 19.30. A little stressful but worth it.

Therese giving it all that!

Happy New Year!

Now we didn't stay long in Sydney. We had our eyes set on Brisbane, but before that Therese brought us on a lovely road trip to The Blue Mountains.We were really lucky with the weather and had an awesome day!

I can't tell you how excellent it is to have an Australian guide who is more sceptic to the wildlife than we are!
Later on that day Therese dropped us off at the bus station and we were off to Brisbane.

Who needs a new umbrella?

The day before the river flooded

When we arrived in Brisbane we were eager to see what the city and surrounding areas had to offer. It was, however, just after the new year and the city was pretty quiet, not much going on at all. Most of the cafes and shops were still on their holidays. It was much different to the busy streets of Sydney.
Most of our time was spent in the library thanks to an assignment I had to write for school. But we did have a lot of exploring time in the city too. It has a nice laid back feel to it all. We had some good weather for the first few days, and then the rain came.

We had been watching news reports of the flooding in northern Queensland, there were some pretty dramatic scenes. But we felt safe knowing that it was happening far away from us and Brisbane was going to be safe enough. The rain in Brisbane started innocently enough, a few showers here and there.The frightening thing was how quickly it progressed into torrential downpours. One minute it was sunny and the next, the streets were like streams. If it hadn't been for the storm drains in the streets the city would have been flooded much earlier and a lot worse than what it was. Each day on our way into town we passed by the Brisbane river and we could see how it was climbing fast. Every so often we could see pieces of debris floating along. As the days progressed the rain got steadily worse and the releases from the Wivenhoe dam increased, the Brisbane river got much higher and the flow of the water was a lot faster than it had been. Bear in mind though that our hostel was on a hill so we weren't too worried for our safety during all this.

Everything came to a head for us around Sunday or Monday, so the 9th or 10th of Jan. The rain was as torrential as usual, our hostel was emptying of people, buildings downtown were being evacuated, the news was full of pictures of houses being swept away by the floods and stories of people dying. All throughout the day and night sirens could be heard racing through the city. There was an eerie atmosphere everywhere we went, a feeling of dread mixed with nervous anticipation. It was almost as though the city was holding it's breath waiting for the river to finally peak, which was still a couple of days away. Our parents were calling us constantly making sure we were OK and trying to get us to go somewhere else. When we went shopping for food, the supermarket shelves were almost bare, all the fresh foods like bread and fruit were sold out, along with bottled water. While waiting in a queue for 40 minutes we decided to get the bleep out of there.

Our bed for the night

NSW Firemen

We booked a one way ticket to Alice Springs and even though our plane wasn't scheduled to leave till 7 the next morning, we headed straight for the airport and spent the rest of the day and night there.

We weren't the only ones with the same idea. The airport was full of backpackers leaving the city. We all slept on the floor that night, meanwhile the river peaked in the city. The next morning we watched the scenes that unfolded the night before. Ipswich, a suburb of Brisbane was under water. Most of the city centre and the CBD were flooded as well. The electricity had been cut in a lot of areas. We were relieved that we were leaving. In the airport, firemen and rescue workers kept coming in from different states in Australia.

The news showed the debris that had been floating down the river, pontoons with boats still attached were like floating missiles taking out other pontoons and piers. Part of the cement walkway, which we used to walk along was torn off and swept downstream, it had to be guided out to sea by a tug boat in fear that it would damage bridges along it's way. 

Turns out it was a good thing we got to the airport when we did, because the flight we were one was almost empty. Around 50 people didn't make it to the airport due to closed roads, etc.

Next stop: Uluru.