We have a daughter, son-in-law and two small children who normally live in what is one of the now flooded streets in the Brisbane suburb of Sherwood. Like Sam’s daughter, our daughter and her husband did their research and were told that the 1974 floods had not reached their property, but today the water came. We have just checked the river heights graph for the Oxley Creek. A major flood level is listed as being 5.5 meters and it has just exceeded 9.7 meters at the mouth of the creek and is rising. The King tide is expected to cause the flood to peak at around 4 am. It is now after 1am here and we are all having a sleepless night tonight. Fiona and Dave had originally thought that they might be able to stay and protect their home, but after hearing that the water was capable of rising a meter in 5 minutes, they packed up and left at 11pm last night. We were all greatly relieved that they went to stay with friends who live in an area that is not in the flood zone. This morning they went back to their home and managed to move some of their heavier furniture, such as their refrigerator, washing machine and their piano to higher ground. They were absolutely amazed by the number of kind people who rushed to help them as they trundled their piano up the middle of their street to the safety of a friend’s still dry carport. A group of lads pushing a piano up the middle of a suburban street , led by a burly 6’3” redhead, must have been quite a sight to see. When they returned later this afternoon the water was knee deep in the bottom story of their home. Other houses on the opposite side of the street were already almost completely inundated. They took their 5 year old son with them to see the progress of the water, as they know that he has been very worried about what was happening. They felt it was better if he could see the flooding first hand, rather than conjure up something in his imagination that might be even more frightening. He was very quiet for a while as they drove back to their friend’s home, then he asked his mother if they could stop to buy a cooked chicken. As they don’t usually buy pre-cooked chickens, this was a rather unusual request, so he was asked why he needed to have a chicken. His answer surprised everyone, as he said “ We have to buy a chicken because I need a wish bone so that I can make a very special wish tonight”. A few days ago he had rung me to tell me that he would really like to be able to go up to visit Mother Nature so that he could tell her politely that we’ve all had enough rain for now, thank you very much. And so say all of us! Where we live, on a hill-side in the Sunshine Coast hinterland that is an hour and a half’s drive north of Brisbane, we have had only 6 rain-free days since the 1st of December. Our rainfall total for this month has already reached 29 inches and we had around 32 inches of rain in December. This hill is now very soggy! I enjoyed reading all of your recipes for shortbread at Christmas time....I did make some of the non rice flour variety. These days the only recipes we have been swapping with our friends are for how to remove the different varieties of mould from every surface in our houses. Thank you for all of the good wishes. It is comforting to know that other people are grieving with us at this incredibly sad time. As Sam says, “things” can be replaced......It is the people we need to worry about and we sincerely hope that there will be no more lives lost in these floods.