The caravan was in place, holidays coming up and we were ready to go. As always, Bryce Enterprises plan things with military precision – which only means that the disasters are more enthralling when they inevitably occur. We had decided that once the van was in place, the next most important issues were a carport for shelter, and to provide run off water for household use. Toilet not an issue – we use Tim's toilet next door in the old butchery.
The spanner in the works, of course, was Paul's new career as Pool Safety Inspector, which came into being on 9 December 2010 – and sent us into a frenzy of new work from that moment. No worries – it was good to be employed again, and paying for things as we went.
I refused to go Boxing Day – too much, too soon – so we left on the 27th December. Little did we know that we were heading into the biggest rains of the decade, with the build up to the Brisbane floods looming ahead of us. It was raining as we left and rained all the way out, Paul in front with a huge load on Josh's truck, me behind in the Nissan loaded to the gills. We got all the way to Kaimkillenbun (about 15k from Bell) and Myall Creek was flooded, which meant turning around and going all the way back via Nanango/Kingaroy. Nanango had just been flooded, which necessitated a 30k detour to make the 2k trip through town. All in all, our 3 hour trip turned into a 11 hour 'hell drive'. I spent the final 4 hours creeping along behind Paul (driving Josh's truck) loaded with gear forever fearful that the whole load was going to disappear over the side.
Got to Bell, bogged the truck at the back of the block, finally gave up on unloading it on the carport site – and had to pull the whole load off and carry it into the building. Then turn tail and head home.
It was an awful trip – but as the days progressed, it turned out to be infinitely worse for the poor folks of Toowoomba /Grantham areas . The Queensland Summer of Disaster had just begun and we were lucky to be well clear of it all.
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