Our evacuation from Roma

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We're back in Brisbane, tired and all driven out, but home safe and looking forward to a comfy queen (luxury!) bed tonight.

What a last 24hrs.

Sunday - rain

Monday - rain

Tuesday - clearing... nope... rain

Wednesday - yep, more rain

Around Monday, Ryan started sending emails and making phone calls to see if the job he was on would be suspened until the new year, we were slightly concerned with the current weather forecast and the previous rain that Christmas might not be spent in Brisbane and even though our caravan Christams decorations are awesome, Roma wasn't our place of choice to spend more time due to flooding.

Wednesday lunchtime we got a call to say the job was on hold until the new year, but we decided to take it easy, pack up the annex and such and get ready for an early departure on Thursday. This seemed like the best plan, until the rains returned that afternoon. By this stage the side street beside the caravan park was flooded and I was begining to wonder if my confident (ready lazy) decision to wait until tomorrow was actually that smart.

Ryan headed out around 7pm to fill up the car and this involved driving through flooded streets. An SES person at the petrol station suggested that if we wanted to get out, we should get out that night. So, we madly folded in the beds, closed the awning, dropped the caravan roof and hooked up to the car. It was like a stealth departure and I do wonder what the manager and other people in the park thought when they got up the next morning to find us gone. We pulled out and hit the road at 8pm.

The main street of Roma was closed and shops were sandbagged against the rising waters. I phoned the parents to let them know we were hitting the road and proceeded to be told what to watch out for and to be careful over and over again by my Dad. He gets very worried about us. It is lovely to know he cares.

We drove. Ryan had a litre of V and a few packets of lollies. We drove. The spotlights went haywire, not switching off when Ryan turned off high beam... they always seemed to get stuck when a truck was coming towards us. We drove.

Toowoomba was such a welcome sight, though a bit foggy. We spent our last night of this trip in the same free camp (Vale View) that we spent the first night. Not that we stayed long this time... we pulled in around 1:30am and left about 8:30am.

Noah is a wonderful traveller. He slept all the way to Toowoomba, so did the dogs, and though he was wide awake after we had setup in Vale View, he took the hint when the lights went off and slept until 6:30am.

To say we were happy to reach the coast and pull up at Ryan's parents house is an understatement. It is lovely to be back and we are looking forward to getting to spend Christmas with family and spending a couple of weeks catching up with friends.

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