Flood tide

Yesterday morning started off like any other morning. Crawling out of bed after a late night, making school lunches. The rain had been bucketing down all night as the remnants of Cyclone Debbie headed our way. I kept looking out the window wondering how I was going to make it to school drop off without an umbrella.

There was a knock at the door. Our neighbour checking in on us. Warning that our street may get flooded in, it's only happened three times that she could remember, but it was a chance. Oh and it you have anything under your house you may want to move it to higher ground.

Hmmm, I thought, but wasn't too concerned. I went under the house and moved a few odds and ends up. Cleared the drains around the house. Then felt pretty ready.

As I came back inside the TV had "Queensland schools closed today!" in red across the screen and Skip relaying the news. What? I thought. That can't be!n Crazy! Like Dubai, when a drop of rain could cause a school to close!

So I abandoned schools lunches and got on the phone to let my class (that I class parent of) know not to bother to turn up to school today.

A quick trip to Woolies to get some food for the rest of the day and the rain kept on coming down. Dreams of cuddles on the couch with the kids, popcorn and movies.

Movies were put on the telly. Toys were dragged out. I kept checking around the house that the drains were cleared. Slowly the backyard was beginning to fill with water, but nothing too remarkable. I drained water from the pool twice as the rain kept coming down. Of course we were fine, what could happen? We're not near the river. Or anything. It will just be a wet day.

The street began to fill with rain water and the gutters poured out a water fall. More and more and more water. Hmmm. I worried about the front path, looked at the door. We'll be fine.

Skip arrived home from work drenched. The office shutting for the day mid-morning. Overboard! We looked around and he decided to get changed before taking a look around outside. While he changed I went outside to take a look around, just as I had many times already, and just as I did a torrent of water came gushing down. Filling up the underneath of our house. A wave. A brown wave of water.

"We're flooding!" I yelled. "Kids let Dad know that we're flooding."

I looked up near our pool and it was a river coming down. The water was up to my knees and rising. I looked under the house and our washing machine  was floating around in a couple of feet of water. I looked out the water kept coming. Rushing around as the water kept rising and rising. Dark brown water, I sloshed through. Every moment or so hoping there was no snake. No lizard. No toad. Especially no snake. Kids leaned out their bedrooms windows. "What's happening! Look at the water!"

After what felt like a lifetime the water stopped rushing through. Calm came over. Water sloshed under house slowing pouring out. The pool was a brown swirling mess. Branches, trees, rubble mess.

The news report said "This is nothing, the worst is to come". Seriously? Shit! It felt like calm but we were braced. What else could we do?!