We left Dingos on the Thursday lunchtime and after saying a sad goodbye to our friend Bron who we were leaving now we got on the bus ready for 1770. The rain had already started and basically didn't stop until Sunday afternoon. We arrived around 7pm to 1770 and by now the weather was torrential and the Cyclone, which is just another word for a tornado, was heading for us. We spent our days here doing practically nothing as you couldn't step outside, we watched films, read, caught up on made in chelsea and played a long game of monopoly, which Amy won!.The noise of the weather was so loud, meaning that neither of us got hardly any sleep each night because it just kept you awake. We both said that on the Friday night we thought at one point either the roof of our room was going to fly off or suddenly we would be floating down the river in our room. that is honestly not being dramatic, we have never seen weather like it! Everywhere was flooding, roads were blocked because trees were down and rivers were all bursting their banks around us and the wind and rain was causing big problems along the East Coast. We were meant to be leaving 1770 on Saturday evening (also Australia Day) ready to do our Whitsunday's sailing trip on the Tuesday. As the cyclone was getting worse we soon realised that we weren't going to be leaving 1770 we were trapped because Greyhound had stopped all services. We managed to change our sailing trip to the Thursday thinking that left us plenty of time for the buses to be running again and get up to Airlie Beach...apparently not! On the Saturday (Australia day or as the Aussies say "straya" day) the rain was still pouring but we tried to get in the spirit by wearing Australian flags around us and using face paints to decorate ourselves with different Australian things. Ended up having a really good night with everyone from the hostel even if the pub that we managed to get to did close at 9pm because of the awful weather!! Finally on Sunday the rain stopped for a bit and the sun showed its face again so we were feeling hopeful that our bus would be running on Tuesday night to get us up in Airlie on time! However due to the cyclone moving further south buses were unable to run from South to North as they couldn't leave Brisbane! By now everyone was getting pretty fed up as we were stuck in a place where the town had about 5 shops and the supermarket was running out of food, cash machines were all down and phone lines and internet had all stopped. This was when we decided that we needed to get out of 1770 and we had heard that greyhound were running from Rockhampton 3 hours north of us so we just had to get up there! On the Tuesday morning we knew that greyhound weren't going to be running until at least Saturday meaning we would have missed our sailing trip. We looked into flights up to Airlie Beach but still had no way of getting to an airport that was open. Some people ended up hitchhiking up to Rockhampton but we ended up getting in a 10 seated taxi and paying quite a bit of money to escape. Driving up to Rockhampton the roads seemed okay but we could see the damage the cyclone had caused out of the window, trees were down everywhere, rivers still flooded and we even saw a deserted jeep crashed into a tree in a ditch, pretty scary that we were part of this bad weather! When we arrived in Rockhampton I think everyone was the happiest they had been for a few days! Our taxi driver Heather, a 70 year old legend was prepared to go and pick more backpackers up from our hostel that night to get them to the bus in time! We spent the afternoon and evening in a hostel arranged by the Oz Experience worker that was stranded in our hostel with us. We got to use the pool and showers at this hostel, which was really nice and just what we all needed. After some dinner and playing some board games it was close to midnight so made our way back to the greyhound bus for our overnight journey to Airlie Beach! 7 hours later and a surprisingly good sleep and WE MADE IT!! Getting off of the bus and knowing we were going to be able to do our Whitsunday's trip was the best feeling ever. We walked to our hostel, checked in and were amazed by our air conditioned room!