The Johnson Girls planned another adventure to follow on from the 2024 shenanigans. This time, the plan is to visit Turkey, Greek Isles, Spain, Portugal and Morocco. We booked our passage on Explora II for the Turkey/Greece leg and also an Intrepid Tour for the Spain, Portugal and Morocco. All that was left was Fi to use her magic on the flights (which are never confirmed until you walk onto the plane!).
The bags were packed and weighed…carry on only! We planned to fly out Monday 26 May to spend a few days in Istanbul before boarding our cruise. So planning went on for a wee while, however this adventure really began on Tuesday 20 May, when the farm became inundated with water! Over 300mls fell in the space of 12 hours, which flooded nearly 60% of the paddocks. Cedar Party Creek flooded, the Manning River flooded and they are calling it a 1:500 year flood - the levels exceeded the highest flood on record for Taree which was recorded in 1929.
Wingham suffered badly - the water cut access outside the town and we were stuck on the farm without power, water and communication to the outside world for quite a few days. Devastatingly for this adventure, the highway from Purfleet to Coopernook was cut off and I was to drive north to Fi’s house in order to fly out of Brisbane, and even if the highway opened, there was no direct way to the highway due to flooded and closed roads. So….for a few days there it was not looking good! It was indeed hard to imagine being in Istanbul in less than a week!
Luck was on my side, when on Saturday night I received messages from friends to say the highway was open! So, on Sunday 25 May, the trek north began and here I find myself at Currumbin with a 4.30 am start to Brisbane.
For the memory…some pictures of the farm to see where things started this week.
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| Looking West from house |
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| Looking North East |
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| Another North East trying to show the breadth of the flood |
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