Boys toys and flooded in again!

When our son Ben was a small boy he was obsessed with tractors and diggers and spent many happy hours in the mud constructing imaginary building sites complete with intricate road systems.

It therefore seems a perfect thing that as an adult he is now a proud owner of not just a big yellow tractor with an assortment of attachments (including a road grader) but also, just recently, his own digger.

Add to this several mowers, trailers – including one set up for tackling bush fires – plus a mighty four wheel drive truck and he is in his element – a happy state of affairs from our (as his parents) point of view.

Our last couple of weeks staying on Ben and Sarah’s property was a mix of catching up with family and good friends, attending book club meetings, playing with the dogs and enjoying family time to fill up our emotional coffers before leaving Australia once again.

We also had our lovely sailing buddies Sue and John visit us for a couple of days which was great fun.

As former owners of a similar rural property, I’m sure their visit brought back a flood of memories of the fantastic resort they had built from the ground up and managed for some years, before launching off into their sailing life.

There was good weather for their visit but otherwise it had been pretty wet ever since we had arrived in Brisbane at the beginning of December and the ground had become saturated over the weeks. Then towards the end of January we had several days of relentless, driving, rain and soon there was nowhere for the water to go.

The dams and the creeks filled up so much that they broke their banks. We ended up being totally cut off as there was deep water across the road out in several places and we had to stay put for a couple of days.

Fortunately we had plenty of everything at home so all was fine and eventually the water receded and we were able to get out and about.

All too soon the time had come for us to leave Australia once again but before flying off we had one last trip up to Ben and Sarah’s lookout to watch the sun set and one last dinner out together before flying off to The Netherlands.

As always, it was very hard to leave but luckily there was a lot to look forward to including a trip to somewhere neither of us had been before but we really want to visit. Any guesses where that might be? (Clue below)