The final weeks of school were seriously insane. Over the Christmas holidays the cleaners clean the wet area with a machine that scrubs it within an inch of it's life, and the carpet cleaners come. In the past all the furniture was moved onto the carpet so the wet area floor could be cleaned, but no one moved the furniture back so the carpets could be cleaned. So in amoungst the Christmas parties we were hosting for all the SEU students' teachers and parents I had a brainwave - why couldn't the cleaners do the floor at another time. I went and spoke to the two lovely ladies in question and they agreed to do it in the last week of school. This meant that we spent a day moving furniture off the wet area floors and then after it was scrubbed we spent a day moving it off and then moving all the furniture off the carpetted areas for the carpet cleaning.
The last two weeks of school also saw a heap of rain. Roads were cut off and we started to get worried that we wouldn't be able to get to Caloundra for our holiday. On the Wednesday before school finished I text messaged Dad (who was already camping with Mum, Jonah and Eleanor - James' two older kids) to find out if our site was available a day early, it was, so we left early on Saturday morning. That decision in itself caused other issues - such as when to pack the trailer, but we managed and got away early!!.
Our trip went very smoothly, but it rained the whole way there. I took lots of pics on my iPhone but haven't downloaded them yet from my phone. We arrived at Dicky Beach Caravan Park at about 11 and quickly got frustrated setting up the camper trailer for the first time. We had borrowed it from my Aunt and due to the rain hadn't had a chance to practice putting it up.
We had the trailer set up and just got the tarp over it and it started to rain. And so began the wettest camping trip I have ever been on. I think we ended up with maybe 4 sunny days in two weeks and maybe 6 days without rain.
Inside our borrowed Camper trailer!!
Our bed
A river runs through it!!! This is Mum and Dad's kitchen, and the water and mud running through are coming from our site and Matt's site which are higher...
Plus water from the tarps was running off on the high side of the kitchen then running straight back down through it. The entire eating/cooking area became a muddy smelly mess. I was chatting to one of the regular campers and she suggested we go to bunnings and purchase some garden edging to create a gutter to divert the water....
And so we did! This is our gutter - it actually worked really well.
Our gutter was just 10 metres of garden edging held down with tent pegs.
It rained and rained and rained...
One plus was the copius amounts of rainwater available for drinking, cups of tea and coffee. Yes, I filled that whole kettle by holding it under the stream of water coming off mum and dad's tarp.
Probably a once in a life time shot - Dad in a santa hat AND a rain coat, handing out Christmas presents. We celebrated Christmas a week early due to the water everywhere and the fact that James' family were going home for actual Christmas day, and Matt and his girlfriend Jess were heading to her family's place for Christmas day too. It was quite an experience, we couldn't put anything on the ground in case it got wet and we couldn't really hear what anyone was saying because the rain was so loud.
Our Christmas tree!!
Our feet were constantly muddy and dirty for the whole two weeks. I told Marko we should all have beautifully soft feet because of all the mud treatments we got!!
And it rained some more!!
The worst part was the smell of the mud...just disgusting!!
We ended up packing up on the 24th and leaving the camping ground on Christmas day. All the flood water was rising and we were worried that we wouldn't be able to get home. But we did....phew!! The roads closed only a day or two later. I've spent the last week cleaning everything we took camping - washing down Matt's tent, the camper trailer and the tarps. Next on my list is the inside of the house. You'd never know to look at it that I did a huge clean up before we left. There are dead bugs everywhere....sigh...I think I'll leave the vacuuming until later this arvo when it is cool.
Emily xoxo
No comments:
Post a Comment