...It's raining, it's raining... and raining, and raining, and raining...

Trust me to get caught up in the largest storm to be recorded in Rainbow Beach's history. Even the Aussies were calling it an act of God!

I arrived in Rainbow Beach after a missionous 16 hour journey on the Greyhound and was welcomed by gorgeous sunshine. I was so happy as it was such a good sign for my forthcoming Fraser Island tour where I'd be camping on the magnificent nature reserve. I met the other people who I'd be on the trip with and we were all really excited about going. That evening we bought all our necessary supplies from the supermarket and got ready for the early start the next day.

In the morning we woke up to terrential rain. Even though the weather was attrocious we still packed up the 4 wheel drives and tried to make the best of a bad situation. But before we could even set off from the backpackers we got a call saying the barge over to the Island was cancelled and we'd have to wait until tomorrow to see if it would be reopened the next day in a hope the weather would get better... if only!

Me and Jodie, one of the girls in my group, decided we wanted to long it out and see if we could go back to the Island once the weather got better but from that day it just got more herendous. The road practically turned into a river and was even closed off so I couldn't have even got out of Rainbow Beach if we wanted to. It was so bad that Rainbow Beach got ripped away and an Indonesian ship got shipwrecked on the beach with the crew wandering the streets aimlessly in their life jackets.

After a few days we found out that Fraser Island had suffered quite considerable damage and was going to be closed for the foreseable future so Jodie and me decided to make a move once the roads reopened. It was such a shame as I was looking forward to Fraser so much but I've made a vow to return for a little holiday when I'm working in Sydney.

I think what was quite ironic about the whole experience that considering we were being inundated with water we were still on a one of the highest level water restrictions over here due to the drought meaning we could only have four minute showers and at one point we had no access to any clean water at all for a couple of hours as the mains water pipe burst. It could only happen down under!

The day we were leaving I woke up with the strangest sensation that I'd gone deaf... the rain had finally stopped and its was hard to get used to not hearing the constant drumming of the down pour. I decided to miss out Noosa as most of the area was still suffering with flood damage and headed straight down to Brisbane to have a long over due catch up with Alex (Toasty).

Although my time at Rainbow Beach wasn't what I'd hoped for it was definitely a memorable experience and it meant I got to make a good friendship with Jodie, which I'm really pleased about.

Photo: Me and Jodie (right) with the Germans making the best of Rainbow Beach

[Next blog entry: Brisbane Sunday September 1st 2007]