January 18th

We were planning to travel into Queensland and visit the Whitsunday's & Cairns but decided against it & two days after we left Brisbane, the whole city was pretty much under water! I managed to get a resort on the Gold Coast through work last minute - right accross the road from the beach and amazing sea views from our apartment so we stayed here and had a fabulous relaxing week! The rain stopped afer a few days & we had fabulous sunshine :)

We are so struck by the sense of togetherness and community spirit in Australia, especially through really difficult times with the Queensland floods. We travelled around the Gold Coast by bus for the last week and the bus company decided to give everyone free travel for the week in return for a donation to the flood relief appeal. In Brisbane, the council asked for volunteers to help with the clean up operation after the floods and 20,000 people volunteered! And listening to all the news coverage it was amazing to see the reporters in tears when they were reporting on how the floods had devistated people, homes & whole towns.