Birthdays and More flood waters.

My wonderful husband celebrated his birthday yesterday. Unlike last year, this birthday was pretty quiet and low key this year as Steve hurt his back whilst raising his bee hives on Sunday afternoon. After spending days studying flood predicted height, and driving all around the neighbourhood looking at previous flood heights he made the decision to raise his bee hives rather than move them. Moving them required a lot of work as he would only have to move them back once the flood went down. The hives were very heay, and he slipped and twisted on the last hive and felt his lower back go which meant his was armchair bound for the rest of the night, and a good part of yesterday as well.

I felt a bit bad cause we didn't even have a present to give him on the day, as we decided to take back the camera I got for Christmas and upgrade to a Digital SLR. We have been extremely happy with the Fuji Finepix s5000 that Steve got 4 years ago and thought we would upgrade to the S5800. What a disappointment. The images were no were near as clear and the colour no where near as good, so we kind of figured that we would splash out and get a Digital SLR and we would share it, half for me for Christmas and the other half for Steve for his Birthday. Have been kind of undecided which way to go. We have the choice of the Canon ESO 400D or the Nikon D40X. I'm was leaning towards the Canon, but Steve is definately leaning towards the Nikon. We have read so many reviews and been into the shop a few times now to play with both. Whilst all the reports say the Canon is value for money, the lens do not get a good review, and even people I know with the camera have said they have upgraded their lens. On the other hand, the Nikon gets excellent lense reviews and the quality of the lens are of a much higher quality. We have also discovered that all the filters that Steve has from his Pentax SLR will fit the Nikon where they won't fit the Canon, so I have a feeling we might end up with the Nikon. There are excellent features on both cameras, but when it all boils down it is the lense quality that makes the difference when taking the photo. Mind you both cameras will take a much better photo than the camera we have now. Getting excited and can't wait to get it and have a play which we will probably be this weekend.

The flood waters are rising in Rockhampton, but still not expected to peak until late tomorrow night or early Thursday morning. They are rising rather slowly with the river only rising half a metre today. I have lots of photos to share mostly for my records. This first lot of photos were mostly taken on Monday 28th January 2008 at the Ski Gardens and along

sir Raymond Huish Drive. Yesterday we went for a couple of drives to see how far the river had risen. We thought it important to show Chloe as the last flood we saw in Rocky was actually 5 months before she was born. In the ten years before that we had probably seen 4-5 floods. Chloe and her friend Amy were pretty bored after our third stop for photos. Mind you they brighten up when we came accross this amazing kids playground which has just been built and opened just before Christmas. Of course they are still big kids and had to try out a lot of the equipment. Wish I had known about it last week when Nat and Nathan were in with the kids. They would have loved it.
This next lot of photos were taken at the Barrage in North Rockhampton. I think we met up with half the population of Rockhampton there, as it seemed as if everyone was there to take photos. It was amazing to see the water just rushing through. We also saw large sections of ground with grass floating down the river. One large section also looked like it was a floating island.

We came home about lunch time as Steve's back was really hurting so that he could have a bit of a rest, and then went down to the boardwalk on the river bank in Quay Street about 5.30pm, and we were amazed at the number of people just walking along the footpath. I have never seen so many people down there before, all just strolling along, taking photos. These floods have definately caused people to get out and get a bit of exercise. These next couple of groups of photos are taken in Quay Street. The first lot were taken on Monday 28th January, and the next lot were taken today Tuesday 29th. You can see quite some difference from one day to the next. Mind you the river had only risen half a metre in the 24 hour period.

Yesterday we also found this back road around Rocky that had some amazing green fields, and the the view of the sunset was just perfect. We took lots of photos. Today when we went to go back and watch the sun set again, the road was closed and the waters covered the plains and a good section of the road. It is hard to beleive that so much water could cover these fields when the river has only risen a half a metre since yesterday. It will be interesting to have a look again tomorrow night. Couldn't see any houses affected yet today.

The kids all arrived back at school today. I got to do lunch duty in the Year 1 area - some of these littles looked so lost. I had a good day - for the moment I am working in the library (I'm hoping that this might turn into something permanent). I spent the morning in classrooms, and the rest of the day preparing all the laptop computers so they could be borrowed out again this year. So quiet and peaceful, so different to where I have worked the last few years. My friend Jan has taken 6 months leave without pay and I must admit, work is not the same without her. I miss her wonderful caring nature and her amazing sense of humour - she always managed to brighten each day, with a good laugh. We have worked together for over 10 years and it truely is not the same without her.

Haven't managed to get any more scrapbooking done. Probably won't either until the weekend. We have definately had a full house this past couple of weeks, with people staying and just dropping in for a cuppa, but I did receive some good news this week, my ironing lady is coming back. I am so excited, her presence at our place is much appreciated and just helps to take the pressure off on weekends when I usually have to do most of the household chores.

Going to finish off with a couple of my favourite photos taken over the last couple of days.