The day after...

But for only 90cm, we would have had a flooded house.  The flood peak was called for 5.5m and was to occur at 4am Thursday morning.  The day before this expected peak we were evacated, the power was shut off, and the flood was at a level of 3.4m and still rising.  We were expecting another 2m of water and that would have put water right up to our house, and we would have had some flooding.  Our neighbours would have been inundated.

"

"Drive-though" McDonalds and Suncorp Stadium where U2 just played a couple concerts

The Pathway we normally take home from work

Our attached townhouse is on the left, the lighter coloured road mark is the high-water

We tried to get to the home of some friends who live outside of Brisbane, but the train couldn't get to their station and our friends could not get to us.  We caught the second last train back into Brisbane and did everything we could to move almost all of our furniture up and shore up the property. What we couldn't move upstairs, we propped up.  We started phoning around for hotels that were open and were lucky enough on our second call to find one that was holding rooms for evacuees.  Many hotels closed or were fully booked for the emergency services volunteers.
We thought we could catch a cab to the hotel from the train station, but we soon found out that Milton Road around Suncorp Stadium was completely inundated.  We walked up to the highest point that we could think of and waited for a cab. We are staying in a really nice hotel but had  a sleepless night waiting for the floodpeak at 4 am.  We turned on the TV at 2:30 in the morning and saw that they were now calling for a peak of 4.6m instead of 5.5m...that translated into hope.  At the first opportunity this morning we walked back to our house and saw that the water had not hit our house or our neighbours.  It is hard to describe the emotions that go with seeing a dry house, but suffice it to say that we felt just about every positive emotion there is, all at once.  If the water had reached the predicted peak, we would have been hit.  90cm is about the length of a baseball bat, or a yardstick.   That is too close for comfort but we will take what we can get.
The power should be back on at our home by this evening (Thursday) or tomorrow, but we will stay in the hotel tonight and have a good sleep.  Tomorrow we can go back home and move all of our furniture back and try to get everything back to normal.
For all of this strife and the negative situation, we have been extremely lucky.  We have also met all of our neighbours who were staying on the street and every one of them offered to put us up.  We were expected to be the last house to get water and everyone as very sympathitic and supportive.  We have also had so much support from Santos and our managers at work.  Strangers have looked out for us and asked if they could do anything to help.  Maybe it is the British influence, but the overal attitude has been one of "keep calm and carry on", and so we shall!

Looking west from the corner of our street this morning, the deepest part is about 2.5 metres.