Holiday flood
Cairns, Australia
Our scheduled flight from New Zealand to Australia snuck us into Cairns right between two weather-related airport closures and just in time for a 2-meter rainfall. Far North Queensland set a flood record in 1977, but this rainfall beat it. And we were here for it. Merry Christmas!
It was raining when we landed for the next three days it downpoured. The library and a pub arcade we found were our activities on rainy day number one, which we planned to replicate on the following rainy day. However, when I drove out of the carpark (Australian for “parking lot”), the whooshing and whirring sounds coming from underneath our rental car slowed the engine for a few seconds and I wondered if we’d stall out. There’s no way to see (and I didn’t recall) the pitch of the street and how far beneath the curb and sidewalk it really is; is the growing puddle 1 or 10 inches deep?? Driving in flood waters is a different skill than the inclement weather driving I know - through snow. I would NOT drive through that lake of water again to return to our parking spot. Who knows how high it’d go, if we’d float away, or worse, total the rental. Instead, I dropped off Josh and the boys at the hotel entrance and drove three blocks up to a soccer field with ample parking on higher ground and walked back to the hotel. By the time I reached our room I looked like I’d been pushed into a pool.
Watching the news and weather forecast, we heard the rain was due to continue; full bars on the weather app indicated 100% chance “heavy” rain for another 24 hours. Our hotel was on high ground, and still the water level on a parked car across the street almost reached its front license plate and back tire rims. Would we be evacuated like others we saw on the news?
Cairns Colonial Resort is sort of a resort - slash - motel. Hotel rooms open to the outdoors. Upon arrival, we checked in and went to our room, number 116 on the first floor. Many of our devices were low on charge, so we immediately looked for outlets and discovered a fuse must have been out which left one wall of ours without power. Apparently, it was easier to move us than to fix the outlets, so we got keys to our new room, 238. We were glad to have outlets that functioned, but later were even more thankful to be elevated off the ground floor.
It was hard to sleep that night, hard to stop refreshing the news to see updates, or to see how bad things had gotten, listening to the sheets of rain crashing onto the roof. Josh and I were both really nervous, but we feel asleep and morning came.
Josh woke up first and walked up to check on our car, which wasn’t touched by pooling water. Almost nothing was. There was no more water, but where had it gone??
From then on, no rain. At least no record-breaking rain. Just like that. (For us, anyway, not for all Far North Queenslanders.)
